


Flying Cage

by frangipani



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Thrawn Trilogy - Timothy Zahn
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bucket o' angst, Conflicted Loyalties, Dark, Dreamscapes, F/M, Force Woo, Mindfuck, hey guys how about we make DFR a little darker a little creepier, luke skywalker's implacable goodness, mara is my woobie, missing four days in Dark Force Rising, no not like that guys, of course we do by which I mean I do, references to Shadows of Mindor, sort of, we don't need another fic about trauma do we
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-02-03
Packaged: 2018-09-21 04:31:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9531614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frangipani/pseuds/frangipani
Summary: “There’s something wrong,” Skywalker says. “It’s not my presence that has you like this. Not me. Not you. It’s something...else.”The last command comes to a head in the four days before Luke and Mara catch up to theChimaera.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> All quotes from Purity Ring's ["Sea Castle](https://youtu.be/Ww9q1HAvPqE)."
> 
> Also holy shit Celina Marniss' epic photoset for this is [ epic ](https://celinamarniss.tumblr.com/post/159317821603/flying-cage-by-frangipani-theres-something) .

_I could build a big machine_  
_Draw pictures for the walls_  
_Hang up all my fragile thoughts_  
_Displayed that you might see_  
_A space, a drop, a cloth, a comfort of_  
_Frailties in me_  


  


**Day 1**

The last time she’d cycled through the impulse to kill Skywalker, she’d been at Varonat, some backwater on the Ison Corridor she'd never even heard of before. Before Skywalker. Before Vader. Before Endor. 

Night after night she’d wake up in cold sweat, her mind replaying the crossing blades red and green, sparks, advancing figures upon her master, while there she was, at Jabba's palace, blaster in hand, right before that two credit lackey Carniss intervened. What did the order matter? It always ended the same way.

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER

 _Drip, drip_ went the leaky faucet in her hovel. She’d fixed it a million times and yet... _Drip, drip_.

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER 

_Drip drip_.

She’d sit breathing hard on that mattress on the floor, knees pulled up. She’d been overconfident and careless and now she’d been left hoping for a second shot -- if only so that she could sleep again. It’d been days and she was starting to make mistakes. Nothing serious, but enough of them and Gamgalon could slot her out of tech work, push again about recruiting her as one of his bottom feeders. What they paid her hadn’t been enough to save up for a passage out of this dump yet. Not after what they charged her for the room. She'd be forced to become another one of his degenerate hunters, dispensing pointless death for sport.

She'd stood for something before. 

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER

This was her life now.

 _Drip drip_.

She had never hated someone this much.

“Do we know which supply depot in the system the _Chimaera_ will use?” Skywalker’s voice interrupts her thoughts. “Mara?”

She swallows, bringing herself back to the present and looks at the holo of the Wistril system she’d pulled up. They’d just gone into hyperspace after leaving Jomark and that mad Jedi Master behind and were on their way to intercept Thrawn's flagship, the _Chimaera_ , where it'd pick up supplies. That red-eyed freak had used her to get at Karrde, making her look like a double-crosser to him and his people in the process. She'd had no choice but to turn to Skywalker for help getting him out.

“I think 7055 Exor. The moon.”

Skywalker's brows furrow. “Not Wistril Prime? You’re sure.”

“I’m not leading you to a trap, if that’s what you’re thinking," she snaps. "I’m doing this for Karrde. Not me. You'd be dead already if it was for me.”

“That’s not what I meant.” He sighs as if her desire to kill him is just a minor inconvenience. Not that long ago it was the guiding thrust of her life. She tamps down on the thought and the wave of loathing that ensues, but --

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER.

Mara pushes it back enough to mumble, “I got into the _Chimaera’s_ computer to get its flight path after Thrawn cut me loose.”

She shuts her eyes tight and stumbles out of the cockpit, feeling the itch at her temples that is the harbinger of the coming massive migraine. Unfortunately, Skywalker follows after her.

“Mara, you--”

“Stay the kriff away from me.” She all but hurtles herself to the cargo hold where she kept the damn ysalamiri.

There. The voices fall silent and she can breathe again. She sits beside the nutrient frame, bringing her knees up and closes her eyes. It works. It really works. She almost can't believe it.

“Mara?”

“I told you to stay away.” She opens her eyes. She’s not starting her life again from nothing again. Killing Skywalker would have to wait. She’d lived through cycles before. She’d do it again. 

“You say you want my help, but you keep this around.” He eyes the nutrient frame warily.

Mara pulls her lips back into a tight smile. “I moved it all the way back here. Didn’t I?”

He continues as if he hadn’t heard her. “C’baoth isn’t here anymore.”

“Go back to the cockpit. The influence doesn’t stretch that far. If I wanted to block you off the Force I would have put them all over the ship. Not just here.”

“Mara, we need to go over the plan.”

Just the thought of jump starting the voices in her head again makes her cold. She scowls at him. “In a second. Now get out.”

He shakes his head at her but leaves.

\--

She drags herself back into the cockpit a good fifteen minutes later and takes him through the basic Imperial protocol for pick ups. The voices are gone for the moment, and everything seems almost normal. This new version of it, anyway.

“Mara,” Skywalker calls as she is about to leave. “Are you alright?”

She flashes him a glare, intending to come back with some scathing retort, but before she can, he continues, “We’re both in this, and if whatever you’re going through gets in the way, it's not just me, it's Karrde and you on the line too.”

“I’m not going through anything.”

He passes her a skeptical look. 

“You could have said no if you were that scared,” she shoots back. He owes Karrde too. This isn’t a favor for her.

“I’m not,” he says. “But I want to know what’s going on. It matters if we’re going to pull this off.”

“There’s nothing going on, Skywalker.” 

She grabs a ration bar and heads back to her microscopic cabin. The boosted skipray she'd gotten from Aves had the advantage of its previous proton torpedo and concussion missile tubes dispensed with to maximize cargo and cabin space, so at least she and Skywalker don’t have to spend four days stuck together in the cockpit. Between that and the ysalamiri, it’d be fine.

Just four days.

\--

Mara wakes up shaking, cold at the back of her neck, pounding in her skull. 

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER 

A sob almost catches in her throat. Sleep fuzzy and disoriented, the wrath of her master’s many voices feels like being skinned from the inside out. For a second, the walls of the tiny cabin are closing in on her.

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER

She can’t breathe, thrashes a bit until she’s falling, the surprise from the impact making the voices go silent.

The cargo hold. Her feet are up, moving her. She walks, falls into a jog. Just her breath and the thump of her boots on the durasteel. 

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL--

She slaps the entry keypad. The door hisses open.

There’s only her breathing, loud in the near empty, darkened space as she jumps in and drops to her knees in front of the nutrient frame. The motion sensors bring up the lights, bright and blinding for an instant. She stares up at the lizard curled up, it's claws buried on the branch of the frame. It's not even a real cage. For a second, she thinks of the magnificent aviaries beside the Imperial Palace kitchens. Her master had kept a flock of hawk-bats there so he and his favored guests could have hawk-bat meat and eggs, a delicacy, whenever they liked. 

She hasn't thought about that in years. Damn Skywalker to hell.

Mara curls on the floor beside the frame. It's dirty and cold, but there’s no voices. There won’t be. It may as well be paradise.

She falls asleep.

\--

**Day 2**

“Mara.”

She wakes up with a jerk and scrambles away in the next movement, senses immediately on alert. 

It’s just Skywalker, awkwardly crouching by where she was just a moment ago, staring at her with a look that is two parts pity, one part confusion.

She stands up straight as if she’d just been on her datapad, instead of asleep on the floor of the cargo hold like some spice junkie near gone from a bad hit. “What is it?” 

There’s a long pause. “It’s something to do with the Force isn’t it? That’s why you keep coming here.”

Mara doesn’t answer. There’s a ‘fresher beside the cabin. She’ll just sequester herself there until she gets all the grime off. She rubs at her face and checks her chrono. Still a ways off from curing her sleep deficit since the cycle started but not bad.

“Mara,” a note of frustration comes into Skywalker's voice. “We’re both working towards the same thing here. This...” he gestures to the cargo hold. “Something isn't right.”

She briefly considers telling him, actually thinks of putting it to words. It’s not just revenge for the life he’d taken from her -- that beautiful, _perfect_ life where she meant something more than what she owed. It’d be easier if it were. 

No, it’s not just that, it’s that the moment she steps out of the ysalamiri bubble every drop of blood in her will scream for his. It’s as literal as the voices in her head, that itch to bring her hands around his throat or to blast the light from his eyes. That impulse is the most of what's left of her abilities since her master’s death -- what he’s left her. Back on Varonat, back on Phorliss, back on Caprioril, at its peak the urge would leave her writhing on the floor gasping. She _couldn’t_ do a thing, however badly she wanted to. Now she can. 

That’s the problem.

Karrde dies if she does.

Skywalker looks at her expectantly. With some distance, she thinks all of that sounds like she’s as crazy as that Jedi Master. She chokes it down and summons a half truth. 

“My abilities,” Mara begins through dry lips. “I can sense you now.” She bites the inside of her cheek. “More. I don’t like it.”

She sees it in his eyes that he’s persuaded. The previous time they'd been in each other's company, the ysalamari bubble had been considerable. A glimmer of skepticism remains though. “This much?”

She laughs humorlessly. “I guess you’ve forgotten that you ruined my life? Such a small thing.”

“Mara--”

She waves him off. “We both owe Karrde. So we have to make this work. That’s all there is to it. I’ll do my part. I did my part in Myrkr."

“I believe you,” he says, but there’s something murky in his expression.

“Then why are you here? I’m not your friend, Skywalker. I need you for this, and you know what?” Mara presses her lips together, hating the next words she’ll say. “I’ll let you go after. Karrde will want me to. But if I run into you again...” She can almost hear the echo of that _drip drip_ from so long ago. That echo of impotent rage. “Nothing’s different.”

There’s something behind that impenetrable calm of his. She'd like to think it might be wariness.

"I wouldn’t waste any concern on my behalf." She shoulders past him.

\--

The voices don’t return. She gets clean and goes back to her cabin. Mara pulls up the maps of the supply depot again, the shuttle specs. She’d missed something, and with a muttered curse, goes to the cockpit. 

Skywalker has his eyes closed and at first she thinks he’s napping, but his posture is too rigid for that. She finally figures it's some sort of meditation. His eyes blink open, and focus on her.

Mara greets him with “I made a mistake. I was calculating on Wistril too, not the moon.”

“That's not that far though, right? We can try a microjump.”

She frowns. “Not worth the hassle and dropping off to go back in will eat up time. We need to be ahead of them.”

“Not that much time. This skipray is smaller than the _Chimaera_ and faster. I think it’s good to do it that way. Otherwise we increase the chances of being sighted.”

“Plenty of smuggling ships at Wistril. We have a decent transponder code. It's not going to be obvious.” She shakes her head definitively. “I don’t want to risk time. It’s our main advantage.”

Skywalker concedes the point. “Okay. We’ll just keep sharp once we get there. I was thinking for when we’re on the _Chimaera_ maybe through the trash compactors would be an option to get to Karrde's cell.”

A familiar itch starts at her temple. The low murmur of the voices begins like a hum at the back of her head. No, she tells herself. I’m busy. No.

“I’ve used it as a way out before.”

The dull thudding in her skull begins.

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER

She rubs her forehead. Stop it.

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER

“No reason I can’t use it as a way in.”

Not now. She has work to do.

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER

“And if you can get into the terminal, that would be even easier.”

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER

“Mara?” 

He’s close enough that she can just take her holdout and try. A half second later she stops that thought. Aghast, she balls her hands into fists and puts them on her lap.

“Good. Good idea,” she manages.

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER

She stands up quickly from the pilot’s seat.

“Mara, I need you to tell me where--”

She doesn’t hear the rest as the voices go louder, on loop, drowning out everything. If she got to the cargo hold. If she just...Mara is out the hatchway and into the corridor, diving into the cargo hold, where the only sound she hears is her breathing.

Mara realizes she's holding herself up by the bulkhead. As she straightens, she spies Skywalker a few paces behind her. His jaw is clenched.

“There’s something wrong. It’s not my presence that has you like this. Not me. Not you. It’s something... _else_.”

Mara laughs over the shudder that threatens at his words. It pitches slightly shrill before she can help it. “Don’t--”

“Yeah, don’t worry, I know, because all you want is to kill me.” He shakes his head, features hardening. “It’s not that either. I’ve felt something like this before. Not like this, but similar.” He pauses. “Someone else’s strings.”

Strings? She scoffs at him. “I don’t care what you think you feel. Leave me alone.”

“How are we going to get Karrde out?” She doesn’t reply and he keeps on. “Something’s happened since Myrkr. You can sense me without the ysalamiri, sure. But something else.”

She goes to sit cross-legged in front of the nutrient frame, back towards him, staring up at the ysalamiri like a guardian deity, silent until he leaves.

\--

Several hours and a couple of ration bars later, Mara moves her bag and her belongings to the cargo hold. Now that she’s discovered a surefire way of getting a full night’s sleep, she’s not about to give it up. She only wishes she had known about ysalamiri before. Not that she could have ever gotten close to one then.

This too she owes Karrde. She doesn’t forget.

Mara strips the sheets from her bunk and puts them on the floor, the pillow on top. It’s not the worst place she’s slept at.

At some point she’s going to have to go back out and keep planning with Skywalker. There’s a small part of her that thinks she might be pushing this. Too many things can go wrong; it's like cranking a spring-box. At any moment, the music will stop, the box will pop open, and she'll get a jolt.

The only thing that holds that thought back is the knowledge that there’s no one else she can turn to. Karrde’s crew has already written her off. To do it by herself is to accept failure again. She can cut and run. She’s done it enough, but Karrde’s face when he got picked up, pale, shocked...

She’d become many things since Luke Skywalker threw a thermal detonator into her life, but a back-stabber, a traitor has never been one of them. Never.

So she walks out and back to her cabin--

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER

Mara pushes it off, but she undoes her forearm holster, hating every second of it. She can keep the voices at bay. She can choose not to act on them. 

She still leaves the blaster in her cabin at a side compartment near the bunk.

Mara takes a deep breath and goes back to the cockpit.

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER

She shuts her eyes and rubs her temples. Skywalker is on his datapad on the pilot’s seat, and looks up when she walks in.

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER

“Tell me again about that garbage pit idea.” She drops into the nav chair and pretends that she doesn’t feel a pull to go back and get her holdout.

He starts talking and she tries, but it’s hard to focus. Something about the Death Star, cellblocks and--

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER

Mara inhales and exhales. “You know,” she interrupts. “I think we should do it the simple way. I can access the main computer so it’d be a quick in and out.” She doesn’t really expect any objections. She gets them anyway, because _Skywalker_.

“Getting out would be a problem. Something would be bound to flag once they realize Karrde is gone, but no one’s going to think to look to see why the compression cycle is going off schedule.”

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER

She grinds her teeth. “Okay, so activate the compression cycle and then what?”

“I can climb up.”

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER

Mara clenches and unclenches her fists in her lap. Focus.

“Those walls are high.” She reaches for a number, but her there’s only--

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER

Skywalker says something she doesn’t catch. She rubs her temples again making a vague noise of acknowledgement. “I’m still not convinced.”

The flickering numbers of the nav screen swim in her vision.

“Mara?”

Focus. “I’m thinking. Just because it worked for you a decade ago doesn’t mean it’s going to work out now. Karrde will have been kept without food or sleep, could he even handle the climb down?” 

He says something else, but she hears--

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER

She blinks quickly. 

“Mara?”

Why are there fusioncutters on the panel?

“Oh, I was doing some repairs, seems she got pretty banged up at Jomark.”

She blinks, slowly this time. She hadn’t realized she had asked the question out loud--

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER

There's a sour taste in her mouth. The fusioncutters are right _there_. Her fingers flex.

“Mara?”

She can’t do this. Karrde’s life will be forfeit. Karrde’s life. She owes him.

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER

Mara stands, places her hands on the chair, because her legs feel shaky, all of her feels shaky with the effort of holding back the impulse. Cargo hold. It’ll be over then. Tomorrow she’ll withstand it for longer. By the time they get to the _Chimaera_ \--

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER 

She takes a step, and the chair slides from her grasp. She loses her balance. How Skywalker’s hand ends up at her arm she doesn’t know, but --

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL 

It’s just a second, less perhaps, and the voices spiral, snake around her, _through_ her, until there's one. Her arm whips out and the fusioncutters are in her grasp, and it’s the most frightening moment of her life because she’s there, but _she isn’t_. There might be a scream bursting from her throat, but it’s not rage, it’s terror. She doesn’t want this. Karrde’s life. It’s her life. Skywalker might be yelling her name, but she can’t hear anything, only the voice from coming from so deep it feels she _is_ that voice in one breathless moment and --

Back-stabber.

_Traitor._

She whirls, flipping on the switch for the beam, lunges once, and arces the fusioncutters up in an underhand swing. The lunge misses, predictably, but so does the swing. Skywalker fluidly grabs the fusioncutters and stares at her in shocked disbelief; that half a second pause is the only reason she's able to slam the heel of her foot behind his knee.

Skywalker bends but doesn’t drop, sends the fusioncutters sailing out the hatchway, enough distraction for her to almost miss his arm dashing out. She skitters away, advances with her shoulder, intending to shove him into the panel. He sidesteps and gets a grip on her wrist, she pivots on her foot, wrist locking out of it. She tries to trap his, but he muscles out of the hold easily, evading the swing of her elbow by an inch all the while trying to get a hold of her arm. 

The cockpit is cramped, she can’t get too much space. He has the Force and he's anticipating all her strikes. It's all she can do to keep her guard and dance out as he lunges to grab her. She's at a complete disadvantage, losing speed, and she can’t do this. She doesn’t _want_ to do this. She doesn’t. She isn’t. 

She stops.

YOU WILL --

With a scream, she slams her head on the bulkhead and watches as two thick drops of blood splatter on the deck just beside her left boot --

YOU WILL --

Does it again. Harder.

Pitch black.

\--

**Day 3**

Mara wakes up with a gasp. The side of her head throbs. She's about to bring a hand to it, except her right hand is cuffed to the headboard of her bunk, with her own cuffs by the looks of it. She tries with the other feeling the edge of a bandage that goes around her head. 

Flashes of the last of what she remembers surface. Panic briefly claws itself up her throat until she turns and spies the nutrient frame only a few feet away. She’s never been more relieved to see that blasted furry lizard in her life.

All too soon her rational mind takes over, coming to a single despairing conclusion.

She’d just forfeited Karrde's life.

Mara bites her lip. Would telling Skywalker have been better? Doubtful. He’d left C’baoth because he’d been clearly insane and now...

She just needs to get through this. 

First, see what Skywalker intends to do. She needs to get to the _Chimaera_. There's a slim chance she can do it alone. But are they still on course?

Mara checks her chrono. Seven hours have passed. Skywalker could have pulled them out of hyperspace intending to drop her off at the first depot they came across. 

Would he come back before then? Mara’s stomach sinks.

“Hey,” she calls. Her voice seems too thin. She tries again louder. “Hey!”

Nothing. Either he can’t hear her or he’s ignoring her. Her eyes rove over the cabin. Her bag is near her. He must have brought it from the cargo hold for some unknown reason. She cocks her head at the bunk...and he put the sheet back on it. Strange.

Mara had just started going through her bag when the cabin door slides open with a hiss. She straightens up, tension knotting her muscles. She still has her holdout here at a side compartment near the bunk if he decides to go a different route from back at Jomark. Maybe mercy has its limits. She shifts closer to it. 

She clenches her jaw. Just because she can't win doesn't mean she can't cause some damage. She still has some dirty tricks up her sleeve. He'll find she's not that easy to put down.

Skywalker just scans her over and neutrally says, “Oh good, you’re up. How do you feel?”

In his hands he holds two small meal trays. Mara stares dumbfounded as he offers her one.

Mara swallows and takes the tray with her free hand, murmuring her thanks, placing it on her lap. The situation is stranger than strange. A threat is one thing, actually making good on it despite having claimed interests to the contrary is another. She knows exactly how it looks, either she’d laid a trap using Karrde as bait, or given that triumphant finish, that she’s just as insane as C’baoth. Neither of these scenarios include making nice over breakfast. 

Normally.

What is normal? A hysterical laugh is building. She brutally clamps down on it.

“Sorry about the cuffs," he says to her incredulous look. "I found them in your bag. I didn't mean to look but I didn't want things to...get out of hand again. The head.” He gestures to the bandage, putting his tray down on the floor. “Can I take a look?”

It isn’t like she has any leverage at all, only an appeal to his good will and his debt to Karrde. How far that would go now doesn’t give her much reason for optimism. She'd be a fool not to be on her best behavior though. 

Mara leans forward slightly. Once he begins peeling the bandage away she winces, some sting mingling with the throb.

“You got yourself pretty good. Probably gave yourself a concussion. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone do that. Not on purpose anyway.”

“I’m glad I was able to impress you,” she blurts out and regrets it the second the words leave her mouth. She’d been able to put on a suitable face in front of Thrawn, why couldn’t she keep her mouth shut here? There's just as much at stake.

But Skywalker smiles a bit, before it fades away into that even expression, Jedi calm. “The wound is not that bad. A bacta patch should take care of it, between today and tomorrow you’ll be fine. I couldn't find more bacta patches than this one. I was wondering where you put the rest. I didn't want to go through your things again.” He gently adjusts the bandage.

She had stopped listening past a certain point. “Fine for what?”

Skywalker looks puzzled. "The _Chimaera_ , remember.”

She stares at him for a couple of seconds. He isn’t seriously implying...

The puzzlement shifts to worry, all evenness gone. “You do remember?”

That hysterical laugh gets even harder to suppress. Either he’s just as crazy as she is or...there is no ‘or’. You can’t pull off a cell break when your accomplice is trying to kill you.

Maybe it’s a saving face gesture, some Jedi decency thing where they can pretend it's her decision when they both know she has no choice. Whatever. She'll keep the Skipray. She'd gotten missions done by the skin of her teeth. This one will be no different.

She says, “Of course, I remember. It’s...” Mara stops and makes herself meet his eyes. “We can do that microjump thing you said. I think the Berlonu sector is close enough and they have ties to the New Republic.”

Why would we stop at the Berlonu sector?”

She presses her lips together. “Drop you off. It should be easy for you to get a transport from there back to Coruscant.”

It's his turn to stare at her.

“But Karrde...?”

“He’s not going anywhere, right?” Her lips form a sardonic smile. “Clearly neither are we.” Mara lifts her cuffed wrist for emphasis. "And the Skipray is mine," she adds just in case she's reading this wrong.

“Oh.” A troubled expression comes over Skywalker's face. “About the cuffs--”

“It’s fine.” She brings her left hand to her forehead, feeling the gauze of the bandage. “I didn’t...I wasn’t thinking.” Her voice fades. Every word is difficult to push out, every single one, but it needs to be said. “This wasn’t. I --” She forces herself to lift her eyes to meet his gaze again. “I didn’t set out to make a trap. It’s...it’s a cyclical thing. An impulse ...comes and goes. I can go months without it. Years.” She shrugs. “Then it comes back.”

He’s silent.

“When it comes back...my abilities do too. Or maybe my abilities come back and they bring it." She shrugs again. "I don’t know.”

“Your abilities come back?” he finally echoes. “You haven’t always had them?”

She shakes her head, not wanting to go into details. None of his business anyway.

“What kind of impulse?”

Obvious. “A killing impulse.”

There Mara does look away, because calling it that made her whole plan of asking Skywalker for help a dumb idea from the beginning.

“There was no one else I could ask or I would have. Karrde’s people think I sold them out. They don’t trust me.” The irony isn’t lost on her. Her voice does strain at the last. “And you do owe him.”

“I do."

“But this isn’t going to work. I thought...You’ve never been...there. I didn’t know how it would go.” 

Silence falls between them for a few beats. 

“I want to help you.”

A bitter laugh escapes her. “Can't pull off a cell break when your accomplice wants to kill you.” 

“No,” he corrects. “Not about Karrde, though that too. I mean with the impulse.”

She shakes her head and looks away. What a stupid thing to say, especially now. 

“Guess I just...” Even for Karrde’s life. She just couldn’t let it go. Couldn’t even defer it. Too many years dwelling on all she’d lost.

His forehead creases. “You just what?”

“I can’t forget.” That killing impulse had kept her alive when she’d had nothing. She meets his eyes. “What you took from me.”

She expects some more of that Jedi tranquility, but Skywalker's eyes widen. “You can’t still be thinking this is all you.”

“What?”

“It didn’t feel like you through the Force. Maybe seeds of it. It draws from you, but it’s something else.”

She frowns, not understanding. It doesn’t matter. “I’m not in the habit of blaming my lapses on anything but me.”

He lowers his voice a little. “The Emperor. You said you could hear his voice from anywhere.”

Mara laughs at that. Harshly. “You’re not suggesting I’m hearing it from the grave. If you think I’m crazy, Skywalker, you can just say so.” 

"No. I think he left it -- his voice -- for you. A memory, an echo to make sure you’d always be under his thumb.”

Mara doesn’t like that phrase. “At his service.”

A look of revulsion comes over Skywalker's face. It seems with difficulty that he sheds it, and simply says, “He’s gone now. And you...you don’t want it...do you?”

Mara looks down to her lap. She doesn’t want to think of Endor, but she does. Her stomach curdles at the reverberation of her master's scream. An echo. One final order, the one she’d never completed.

The one whose failure to carry out led to his death.

It’s been five years though. That life is gone. Her encounter with Thrawn had sealed it. She has no use for that order. Not in this life. Maybe it gave her something to live for before, but it's going to bring everything crashing down now.

Besides, she can’t take out Skywalker. Not while he has the Force. She can’t even get close. 

“Do you,” Mara licks her lips not quite believing that she’s about to ask this. From _Skywalker_ , no less. It makes her stop. “If...if what you’re saying is true...do you know how...how to get rid of something like this?”

Skywalker hesitates. “Not exactly.”

Something twists inside her. “You said you’d seen it before.”

His expression grows haunted like she’s never seen on him. “At a large scale. There was other... stuff in play. It involved...actual...material implanted in the brain. Meltmassif. Have you heard of it?”

Mara shakes her head.

He nods as if that’s a good thing. “I don't feel _that_. One of Palpatine’s Force operatives...specialized in it. Someone by the name Lord Shadowspawn."

That makes her snort. “Sounds like a name from a holothriller. Doesn't sound like the Emperor. He had limited patience with theatrics. Barely could stand them from Vader. He didn’t have any other Force operatives other than Vader anyway.” She isn't going to think of Thrawn and his _lies_.

"And you." A muscle in Skywalker's cheek twitches again as if he wants to say more, but is trying very hard not to. 

"I wasn't like Vader," she mutters. Not even close. 

“This echo," Skywalker plows on with some reluctance, "isn’t like that. Maybe, if I can just get a sense of what it is in your case -- how it works, I can do something.”

There’s not much of a choice. She may as well point the blaster at Karrde herself and pull the trigger otherwise.

“All right,” she says. 

His expression becomes cautious. “I’ll need the Force.” He gestures to her food tray. “Eat something first.” He unwraps his own.

Mara sighs, her appetite is gone. “Maybe we can play with the ysalamiri bubble. Just enough Force so you can try, but not so much that it becomes...unmanageable.” She nibbles at the meal.

Skywalker considers the idea while she eats as much as she's able to. He switches the subject. “Do you need to use the ‘fresher?”

She does, actually, and puts the tray on the floor. She won't eat any more. He crosses over to the bunk, leaning over her, and sliding his thumb on the lock. It’s strange him being this close without the voices coming back. There was Myrkr, but it’s different. The cabin is too cramped. She feels jarred at feeling his fingertips at her wrist as he holds it, scrutinizing the faint red circle.

“I got the ysalamiri here before moving you,” he's muttering. “I didn’t know how much reach...” It crosses over to extremely weird and she pulls her wrist away, making a show of examining it herself to ignore how close he is.

“Looks fine. I don’t think I did too much pulling. I’m...” Mara lifts her head and gestures outside. It's awful to ask this, the bubble might extend a bit further now that the nutrient frame is in her cabin, but she doesn't want to be blindsided again. "You mind...?"

Skywalker nods. “I’ll stay here.”

She mumbles her thanks, thinking she may as well make the most of it. Mara rummages for a spare flightsuit and some underclothes, feeling extremely strange doing it in front of Skywalker, but he’d fished out his datapad. 

Mara steps over him and into the corridor. 

\--

After a shower, Mara returns to the cabin. She climbs back on the bunk and reaches for the cuffs.

“I don’t think we need that,” Skywalker says quickly. “That echo works through the Force and the yslamiri take care of that.”

“Yeah, but...just to play it safe.” Logically, he's right, but that feeling of almost being outside of herself, of _losing_ herself like that...

He gestures for her to scoot forward and away from where the cuffs dangle from the headboard. She doesn’t know what he is about to do, but goes with it. She hears the cuffs click as they release. 

Skywalker turns and presses them into her hands. “Here.” She looks at him quizzically, as she clicks them on. She’d done nothing to deserve any kind of trust either. Quite the opposite. But right, all-powerful Jedi. He has nothing to fear from the likes of her. Maybe that's the point. Fine. 

“Where do you keep your bacta patches?”

She slides off the bunk and goes to a compartment, and hands him one. He brushes her wet hair to the side. Over the awkwardness of having him so close again, she says, “So I guess we start with just putting the frame outside.”

“Okay,” he says as he carefully presses the bacta patch on the side of her forehead.

“I don’t have such a good sense of how ysalamiri work.”

“So while you worked for Karrde...?” 

“This is my first cycle while working for him.” It sounds nice and technical, which is a relief. “My abilities didn’t start to come back until I found your X-wing. So I never really dealt with ysalamiri like someone who has the Force before.”

“Is there anything that triggers it? Apart from me.”

Mara shakes her head. “Not that I’ve figured out. It comes and goes randomly. Builds up.” 

“So even if you did step outside the bubble, the impulse wouldn’t peak right away. Gives you a chance to manage it.”

She nods, fighting off a cringe -- some job she did managing it. “It’s taking less and less time for it to peak though.”

“Proximity, right,” Skywalker muses. He’d finished and gestures for her to move aside to get at the nutrient frame. 

She climbs on the bunk and watches him. As he goes outside, she steps towards the door keeping herself within the bubble.

All those years looking at holos, imagining what it’d be like to buy closure for that chapter of her life by ending his...

But she isn’t living credit to credit anymore, trapped in some nowhere Outer Rim hellhole. She’d gotten her ticket out from Karrde, and if she hadn’t been so stuck on the past, she wouldn’t be here trying to keep her life from falling apart around her again. 

“Ten meters, right? I left it out in the corridor.” Skywalker’s voice breaks through her thoughts. “If it’s a bubble the easiest thing is to find the edge to have a control mechanism.” He wanders maybe a few feet from the door, right beside her bunk. “This is it.” He looks to her.

Mara stays where she is by the door for a few seconds, and she hates that pitying expression on his face. It gives her the extra impetus to move. She can’t help herself, she’d risk it all over being taken for some hapless victim.

“I haven’t changed my mind about you.” She takes one step closer to the space outside of the bubble. “There was no echo at Myrkr and Karrde's the only reason you’re still breathing.”

“I know that,” he replies, calmly, always so calmly. “I owe him my life. I don’t want to see any harm come to him because of me.”

There’s a tight knot in her chest because he’s saying the right thing and she both hates him for it and _can’t_ , which makes her want to even more. She takes a deep breath and takes the step that brings her out of the ysalamiri's bubble.

Skywalker moves to the foot of the bunk. She waits for something to happen, for the voice to rip through her mind again, but of course, it doesn’t. 

“You said it takes less time to peak now?” 

She nods and sits on the bunk. Some defensiveness twists under the words when she says, “I haven’t timed it or anything.” She fiddles with the cuffs. “What were you going to try?”

“I was going to look at it.”

“In my mind?”

He nods. 

She doesn’t like that idea at all. Only the Emperor had been able to do that. In fact, she’d been instructed more than once to actively hide her thoughts. Well, from the only other Force user she’d been exposed to. Vader. His other murderer.

“I’m going to try and make it as least... invasive as it can be,” Skywalker is saying.

Mara's lip curls. “Least invasive,” she repeats. “For mind contact.”

A grim expression comes over his face. “It’s not just an issue of privacy, the last time I dealt with something like it, the meltmassif created a...deadman interlock.”

She gapes then laughs. “A kill switch?” She shook her head. “The Emperor would never do that to me." She scoffs. "I was his Hand, not a thing. I was _valuable_ to him.” 

Skywalker seems to be about to say something, but thinks better of it. “You do want this echo gone?” 

Mara sifts through her reluctance. If she hadn’t given up on carrying out her master’s will, this would seal it. There’d be no way she’d get any kind of advantage over Skywalker if he’d been inside her head. 

There is also an insidious thought. Could Skywalker _replace_ her master's voice with his?

Mara pushes the thought away. It makes no sense. Skywalker might be a Jedi, even a powerful one, but his powers are nowhere near what the Emperor’s were. She _remembers_ her master's power -- just a portion of it had lived inside her, still does in a way. Skywalker can’t even get rid of that without resorting to convoluted tactics. Why would he even want to do such a thing?

It doesn't add up with the naive Jedi who'd let C'baoth live. Her master had no compunctions about what needed to be done. It was that recognition which had made her so useful for him. Through her, he'd had _reach_. An eerie thought dawned on her. That mad Jedi's voice. 

_Someday you will kneel before me._

He would, without rhyme or reason, just for the sake of having a puppet. But not Skywalker. The contrast is stark.

Skywalker will know your secrets, another part of her cautions. The Katana fleet, for one. The New Republic could finish off Thrawn with it. Skywalker will know and that’s not even your secret to tell.

If that’s the price for Karrde’s life, and Skywalker finds it in her head, then she supposes that’ll be the fee. Karrde will just have to live with it. She doesn't know where it is.

“Mara? I need to know that you’re serious about this.”

Mara nods and looks away. Skywalker's digging for confirmation and she’s not much fond of explaining herself, least of all to him. She swallows down her pride, ruthlessly clamping down on the part of her that screams betrayal. 

“We can’t rescue Karrde with me having it, and I told you I-- I can’t do it alone.”

She sees it in his face that it’s enough, relief washes through her until --

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER 

There’s no warning as it rips like a thunderclap right through her skull. She grits her teeth. 

“You were going to take a look,” she bites off.

His gaze unfocuses.

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER

She shuts her eyes and leans forward. There's agonizing pressure in her head.

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER

Too much. She claws at the sheets. It’s either that or turn around and try to claw at Skywalker's eyes. She feels her control slipping and launches herself off the bunk and towards the door, gasping as the voices go silent.

Her head is clear.

She enjoys the silence for several seconds before staring over at Skywalker who looks like he’s seen a ghost, and it proceeded to soundly slam his head against the wall. Repeatedly.

“Well?” she croaks.

Skywalker gulps and says, “I can’t get a foothold with...all that.”

“You wanted to take a look,” she reminds him.

“I think I need to already be within your mind before it hits.”

Very few things make a difference now. “Okay,” she says. “Just give me a moment.”

He comes back with “Take your time. I need to... catch my breath too.”

She laughs, and it’s that laugh with the hysterical note underneath, but at this point she can’t bring herself to care. “What’s it like?” she asks in spite of herself.

"What?”

“The echo. What’s it like on the outside?” She fights off the urge to laugh again. What outside? There is no outside.

His voice sounds a little strangled when he speaks. “Cold.” She looks at him oddly, but he has a distant look in his eyes. “Dark.” He pauses a bit. “Malicious.”

Mara suppresses the urge to scoff. Why would a Jedi think otherwise about her master’s echo? Especially the Jedi who _killed_ him. She shouldn’t have even asked.

She forces herself to relax. After a few minutes she asks, “Ready?”

“Okay. Can I...?” he gestures to her bunk. She boggles for a second that he’s about to go into her mind, but is asking for permission to sit on her bunk. 

“Yeah,” she says and slowly moves out of the bubble. She takes a spot at the head maybe three feet away. 

It’s been ages since she’s had mental contact like this. She feels a nervous thrum gather at her nape.

“It’s okay.”

“Get on with it, will you?” 

There’s pressure in her head, not painful like last time, but uncomfortable. 

“Don’t -- oh.” 

She feels a little smug, knowing he’d been about to tell her not to push back, but after the initial unfamiliarity she instinctively eases into the contact. It’s shallower than what she expected. She’s not sure what Skywalker is doing.

_I’m containing my presence_ , his voice says. 

And that is startling enough that she pushes hard before she can help it, feeling him dislodge, not too dissimilar from losing one’s footing. And then... 

__YOU WILL --_ _

__Back to the bubble._ _

__“Well that was a failure.”_ _

__“I thought it might take a few tries to get it down.” Skywalker's tone aims for soothing._ _

__She tightens her jaw. “Go again,” and goes back out._ _

__This time she's ready for the pressure and the odd awareness of another presence in her head._ _

__“How is it --”_ _

__YOU WILL --_ _

__Into the bubble she goes. She chews on the inside of her cheek._ _

__“That was fast,” Skywalker comments mildly. “But it makes sense if proximity is a trigger.”_ _

__“It still takes it a bit to ramp up.” Mara relaxes herself. “Again,” she says, and steps out. A blink and he’s _there_. _ _

_Can you hold, while it hits?_ he asks. 

__She doesn’t bother to reply, just grits her teeth as it does._ _

__YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER_ _

__The pressure again. Mara breathes, attempting to relax._ _

__YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER_ _

_Hold on_ \-- the rest of what Skywalker’s saying is drowned out by 

__YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER_ _

__She feels him dislodge again and goes back into the bubble._ _

__Skywalker is wincing and shaking his head. “That’s really...strong. It pushes me right out.”_ _

“What does that mean?”

He considers it for a moment. “It means we might have to go under it.”

Mara tilts her head. “Under it?”

“It’s overwhelming your conscious mind, I don’t think I’ll be able to see much there. It won’t let me.”

She startles. “My unconscious mind.” She laughs. “No. Not on your life.”

Skywalker pauses and his tone becomes guarded. “I don’t know that there is any other choice.”

This is out of her area of knowledge, the mere fact makes it suspect. If she didn’t like it when she's conscious, having someone -- _Skywalker_ \-- rummaging through her head while she's unconscious sounds even worse. 

“Can we keep trying this?”

“We can,” he says reluctantly. “But we only have until we drop out of hyperspace. I...don’t know how much time it’ll take.”

Blast it. He's right.

“How does that work? I just hit myself hard enough to pass out again and you,” her lip twists in distaste, “just go and trawl through?”

“The unconscious part is easy,” he replies. “I can get you there through meditation. But the rest is...complicated.”

“Complicated how?”

“The unconscious mind doesn’t work the same way. It doesn’t obey logic or rationality. I’m going to need you to guide me. So you have to be sure that you want me to help. Otherwise...” 

"Otherwise what?"

"I'm always going to be a -- a foreign element, an intruder in your mind. If you're not certain you want me there on some level, your subconscious will just kick me out automatically."

"Ah." At this point, she's certain that's not a problem, given her narrowed set of options, but she senses Skywalker is oversimplifying. "How exactly can I guide you if I’m unconscious?”

“The type of meditation should put you in a half-lucid dream state, kind of. It’s more of a trance than meditation. It won’t be,” he seems to search for a way to explain, “you-you, but it will be an instance of you. It should be enough.”

She doesn't understand any of it and is liking it less and less. “You _have_ done this before, right?”

He winces slightly. “I tried something like it to find memories once with...family, but...”

“Fantastic.”

“To be fair, it’s going to be a lot more uncomfortable for me than for you.”

That answer crawls under her skin. “Sure,” she doesn't really mean it when she says, "Unless you set off a deadman's interlock, right, Jedi?" but he blanches for a second. It's the most reaction she's ever managed to score with her sarcasm, and it should feel gratifying but it doesn't.

Mara breathes in. Whatever. It's her with cuffs around her wrists. Her with an out of control killing impulse. With her life about to fall apart. Again.

“Okay,” she murmurs. 

“You know the basics of meditation?”

She nods, pulling in her legs to sit in a cross-legged position, sliding her left hand over her right. 

“Good,” he says. “But since we’re doing something a little different, spread your hands.”

She does as far as the cuffs let her. 

“I don’t think my voice is going to relax you,” he mutters half to himself. “Maybe a mantra.” He closes his eyes for a long moment. She’s about to hurry him when his eyes fly open. “My world. My will. There.”

Mara looks at him strangely. Jedi.

“Repeat that. My world. My will. Focus on the words. I’ll be counting down.” He hesitates. “The mantra is not only meant to send you under. You can use it as a control mechanism. In case the echo comes into play."

A chill runs down her spine. He makes it sound so ominous. It’s not, she reminds herself. It’s just her old master’s echo and he’s gone. She just needs it out of her head. Her master would have understood. He'd understood when she'd failed to kill Skywalker, hadn't he? It'd been more than she'd deserved. 

She shakes herself. “If it can move me when I’m conscious can’t it move my unconscious more?” 

“The unconscious is not that easy to move. There's too much in it. It’s...symbolic, and cyclical and has... multiple rings, multiple yous, multiple... everything. But that doesn’t mean that the voice won’t try. Let's get started.”

“Wait,” she has to ask. “Why do you refer to it as one voice?”

“It is one, isn’t it? The Emperor's. It just...repeats until it seems there’s more.” He went back to the instructions. “As you recite it slowly bring your hands together.” 

She feels extremely stupid doing so, but she starts, “My world. My will.” She takes a deep breath and holds it. She slowly releases it. “My world. My will.” Another deep inhale. Slow exhale. “My world. My will.” She inches her hands together. 

In the distance, she hears Skywalker murmur, “Five.” 

It _is_ jarring. Mara forces herself to continue. “My world. My will.” She inches her hands together more.

“Four.” It’s a softer murmur.

“My world. My will.” Mara brings her hands closer.

His voice goes softer still. “Three.”

“My world. My will.” Her hands are almost touching.

“Two.” It’s no louder than a whisper.

“My world. My will.” Mara folds her hands and focuses on feeling her hands together.

“ _One_.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously:
> 
> _“If it can move me when I’m conscious can’t it move my unconscious more?”_
> 
> _“The unconscious is not that easy to move. There's too much in it. It’s...symbolic, and cyclical and has... multiple rings, multiple yous, multiple... everything. But that doesn’t mean that the voice won’t try.”_

__  
_The moon is dead but she still pulls on me_  
_Get inside and pull on my sea_  
_Take time, make slow_  
_Where have I been? Why can't you see me?_  


  


“My world. My will.” 

Mara's awareness of herself grows fuzzy and thin like sounds heard from under water. 

Her hands are around something, the coarse, long neck of a beast. It’s hot and humid with yellow trees all around. A jungle. The Great Jungle. There’s a vague rocking motion as the morodin she’s on glides forward on her six stubby legs. The morodin comes to a stop at a clearing and looks around the trees to her left. 

She doesn’t hear any airspeeders. The morodin chuffs; she doesn't either.

She turns her attention to the man below. 

He’s there in his black tunic and boots, wearing a puzzled expression as he looks at the pale violet worms that cover the ground. She almost goes for her blaster. Intruder. 

No. 

She has been tasked otherwise. So she pats the morodin's neck, requesting her to stop, and watches as he catches sight of the viscous trail leading to the first section of the morodin's maze. The Intruder looks up and his blue eyes widen as he takes in the ten-meters long yellow, darkly mottled creature, tracks up to find her sitting on its back.

“You’re the guide?”

She shakes her head, gesturing to the morodin. “ _She_ will be your guide. I will interpret. You’re looking for The Hunter.”

“The hunter?” he repeats, still scrutinizing her and the beast in turn. 

“The Hunter at the center of the maze.” The morodin circles around him in her slow gait, lowering her head to examine him back. 

There's a fraction of a pause. “Yes.” His eyes rove over her arm. 

She glances down, but sees nothing unusual, just the black scales that run along the center of her arm from her wrist up to her shoulder, similar to the dark mottling that runs down the morodin’s back. They're no thicker than her index finger. She has them down her back, too; they'd be visible above the back of the simple gray sleeveless tunic she’s wearing in the sweltering heat, but the fall of her high ponytail probably obscures most of them. 

The morodin huffs.

“Get on then," she interprets, extending an arm. He stares at her a moment, eyes lingering on her scales, and clasps it just below the elbow. She pulls him up so he's sitting behind her on the spoonbilled beast. His hands fall tentatively to her waist, holding on. She pats the morodin's neck again, urging her forward. 

“What is this place?”

“Tropis-on-Varonat.”

“Varonat.” He seems to be placing the word. 

“Anoat sector,” she supplies, going into the bag she has slung across her body. 

“Oh, Hoth is near there.”

That means nothing to her. She continues fumbling, past the blaster, until she finds the pouch with the berries. After she fishes them out, she reaches to press a few with the shrub leaves attached to them to the morodin's forearm. She takes some loose berries for herself.

The beast stops and growls. They have company.

“I hear it too,” she murmurs.

“What is it?” the Intruder asks behind her.

“Hunters.”

“Thought he was in the maze.”

“Hunters, not The Hunter." She looks behind her, but doesn't see anything. 

"They hunt you?" the Intruder asks, leaning forward slightly, angling for a look at her face. 

She presses her lips together, meeting his gaze in a measured stare. "They try." 

The beast growls again. Doesn't seem like they're close. Not yet anyway.

"No, you're right," she agrees. "I don't think so either." The young have been moved deep into the jungle, and the largest of the herd are standing by keeping watch, she's more irritated than worried that these bottom feeders keep trying.

“Morodins look a little like dewbacks, lizard slugs," the Intruder offers after a moment as they move further into the maze. "I mean not the long neck, or the forelimbs, and morodins are longer," he corrects a bit clumsily. "But they're reptilian, no?”

The beast growls.

“They are nothing like dewbacks. They might look like lizards, but they’re mammals." If her tone is curt at the next, it's because _this_ is where the distinctions between who lives and who dies are made. “They are _sentient_. It’s barbaric to hunt them for sport as if they were things, trophies for the rich and bored. Against the law.” 

"Oh, I --"

"Shh!"

She hears it as quickly as the morodin does, and her head turns along with the beast's. The airspeeder comes into view at a considerable distance through the trees. It stops and its passengers, some human, others krish, and a few rodian dash out, weapons in hand. From the thick trees around them a group of about five or six morodins dart out, clearly having been on the lookout. The ground shakes as they rear up a clean three feet above the ground. Some push the speeder until its dashed into the trees, while others simply advance to the group, which has stupidly failed to scatter. The snap of blaster fire breaks out, along with the flash of bolts, until smoke consumes the whole scene. Frenzied yelling and the screech of metal crushed underfoot mix with the the morodins' roars.

It looks as if they've taken care of things, but she might still be helpful. She knows she can.

“You’ll be safe here,” she admonishes the Intruder and dashes down the morodin. “She'll take care of you.”

“Wait!” he calls, but she’s already running, hand in her bag pulling out her blaster.

When she reaches the area, the smoke has already begun to clear. What’s left of the hunters is highly agonized, near ground to the dirt. The morodins offer mercy, and she takes her cue. They step aside to let her through and she walks forward, blaster in hand clipping off headshots. She’s up at the last moaning body, aims at point blank range and fires to the Intruder’s sharp cry of “No!”

She turns around to find two massive morodins blocking his path. They ask what do with him. She raises a hand and they let him through.

“I told you to stay.”

He walks past her crouching down by the last body. A redhead, her forehead smoking from the shot, long braid dangling on the ground, a forearm holster at her wrist, but no blaster in sight. Her eyes, still open, are the color of weeds. 

The Intruder shifts his gaze onto her as she puts the blaster away.

“Her?” He looks at the dead woman and then up at her several times growing more and more apalled as he does. "You --why-- why her?" he stammers. He looks down again, eyes landing on the empty holster. "She wasn't even armed."

“She did nothing and let them.” She puts away her blaster into her bag and turns back the way she came, lifting a hand to give an acknowledging pat to the neck of a nearby morodin who huffs his gratitude. 

There’s an annoyed growl from a morodin at some distance. The guide.

“She says not to do this again," she calls, turning back to the Intruder several feet away, still crouching by the dead woman. "You’re far away from home. Never separate from your guide.”

The Intruder flinches and pulls himself away from the body, closing the dead woman's eyes before he goes. He glances at the rest of the carnage and winces.

She flashes him a disapproving look. What does _he_ know of this place? “This is just.”

He doesn’t reply and she returns to her morodin, the guide, humming soothingly as she climbs back up. The beast has been tasked too. She doesn’t want to fail either. 

The Intruder climbs back on behind her, and the morodin moves further into the maze. They ride on in silence save for the sound of night birds and insects. The sun, already low in the sky, sinks further.

“Were you born here?” the Intruder asks after a moment as they pass a group of morodins drinking from a stream, shadowy in the twilight.

“No, I was taken in.” She smiles faintly and leans the side of her head against the beast who croons faintly. “Otherwise I would be like them.” They pass a few more morodins waddling along in pairs. “They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”

“They are,” he grants although it has an inquiring undertone. “What specifically though?”

“See the marks --the trail-- we follow into the maze?” She gestures ahead of them to the trail, which glistens, silvery, in the thickening dark. 

"It's a...a slime trail?"

She nods. “They make it and it makes the berries grow." She gestures around them. "It makes...everything grow. Once they could even grow their own space vessels.” 

"Organic ships?"

"A long time ago. They're not from here either." This is a story she knows well and her voice becomes hushed as she tells it now. "Something horrible happened and they lost all contact with their world, they lost their ships. Everything. Varonat's all they have. But Varonat needs them now. The ecosystem here would fall apart without them."

"It must have been...terrible to lose everything," he says softly. "Like that."

The morodin growls. 

"She says not to pity them," she interprets. "The morodins are happy here. It's just the hunters." Her tone becomes hard. “Morodins disturb no one. They've earned the right not to be disturbed, and if they are wronged...”

“Justice,” the Intruder says slowly.

"They used to not fight back. For years. Used to not be able to tell the difference between a krish and a human," she smiles faintly, "but that has changed."

“It’s --” 

The morodin interrupts him with a low rumble. 

The ground shakes and she curses vehemently. “Heavy artillery.”

Suddenly there’s a flash and a resounding crash, the scene around her growing bright, momentarily blinding her. She feels herself flung off, weightless until her back hits a hard surface. Tree, she thinks belatedly. She hears the morodin roaring as if from far away, but the ringing in her ears is too loud. She thinks, _don’t go_ , but her lips can’t form the words. She knows the morodin shouldn’t go, that danger lies in wait, but she has been tasked. She will see it through come what may. If something should happen...

With difficulty, still shaking the disorientation, she lifts herself up, realizing the part of the jungle where they'd been has been decimated. There’s nothing around her. No hunters. No morodins. Only demolished jungle, trees and vegetation blasted apart. She no longer has her bag with her. No food, no weapon. Finding the morodin comes first though, she'll worry about the rest later.

She feels the path that the morodin took as if she had taken it herself. 

Finding The Hunter doesn’t seem like a good idea anymore. That becomes clearer and clearer the longer she walks into the dense undergrowth as the twilight lifts into night, the yellow eye of the moon staring down, the only illumination on her path. Everything is eerily silent, no bird or insect cries, only the sound of footsteps, the crunch of twigs and leaves under her feet.

If something should happen to the morodin, it would be as if it happened to her. All this way to find her, only to lose her again. Like losing herself.

Weak growling soothes her anxiety, makes her steps go faster. She steps through enormous tree roots and dangling vines into a glade and her heart stops. There’s the morodin, her spoonbilled snout up barely past a lake of muck.

Quicksand pit.

The beast growls at her to help the Intruder and she rushes forward, not knowing what else to do. The beast is too far, too large, sinking too quickly. The scene unfolds with horrifying distance. She wants to toss herself into the quicksand after her. Does it matter? Nothing matters. The morodin cries out again for her to help.

She scrambles towards the edge of the pit. The Intruder is not sinking as fast as the morodin, and closer to stable ground. He looks more surprised than fearful as he struggles against the sucking mud that reaches past his waist. She reaches for the Intruder’s hand with a a wrenching feeling, as if she knows how this is going to end. She should save herself. She needs to save herself.

But she shouts, “Take my hand!"

His eyes lock onto hers as his hand closes around hers. “We can’t do anything here,” he says, steady, as if he’s not sinking too. “Not deep enough. Send us deeper.”

She doesn’t know what he’s talking about. All she sees is the morodin sinking in the distance and she can do nothing, absolutely nothing to stop it. 

“Mara,” he calls. 

“Only she can help!” The morodin is scarcely visible.

He looks at her in confusion. The mud is past his shoulders now.

“That’s you-- all of it is you.” He catches her despairing look. His hand slides from her grip. “The mantra, Mara. Take us further down.”

The morodin is dying, she can feel it, as if she herself can’t breathe, foul muck clogging her nose, her mouth. She's drowning.

“It’s just an echo!” he yells. “All of this is yours!”

Something about that triggers a sense-memory of some sort. A distant whirring and humming, her hands, the back of her palms pressed together.

 _My world_ , she thinks, her eyes falling shut. _My will_. 

There's wind at her face when she opens her eyes.

It’s a sensation she’s always loved, soaring in the air, her hair whipping about, shock of adrenaline through her veins. She angles herself to pick up the downwind current and swoops down, landing on one knee in front of the Intruder, hard enough to kick up dirt, wings spread, one clawed hand on the floor, a leg spread in a dancer’s pose.

The Intruder takes a step back, startled as he should be. 

She brings herself to her full height, and tucks back her wings with a snapping sound like the closing of a folding fan, only louder. 

“Wings now,” he says, as if it's a riddle. His gaze pours over her, very blue and more than a bit confused just before he swallows and turns it away, telegraphing unease. “Not scales.”

"Yes, wings." She tips her head forward, her high ponytail swishing lightly. She raises her eyebrows with a smile. "You _have_ seen them before, right?"

His eyes find their way back to her face and the corner of his lip quirks almost unthinkingly. "Not on real-- not on people," he corrects quickly.

"Real?" She moved forward towards him, frowning a little. "They're real life wings." She shifts to the side and extends her wings a bit, pushing her hair over her shoulder so he can see where the wing bone meets her shoulder blade. "Here." She grabs his hand, pulling it against the bone. "Feel."

He flinches and pulls his hand away, but in doing so grazes against the leading edge of her wing, and she giggles.

"Ticklish," she explains as a weird look comes over his face and he shifts a little. 

She tilts her head to the side. "Did I startle you? Try again." She takes a half-step towards him, closing the distance between them and opens her wing slightly.

He looks as if he's about to refuse, this strange intruder who stares fixedly at her face, eyes peering into hers as if he's searching for something. Odd. But he does reach out gingerly, the pads of his index and middle finger tracing down the leading edge of her wing to the middle, his fingers pale against the midnight black of her feathers. He traces slowly back up, still staring into her eyes. More than searching, the way he fixes his eyes on her gives her a strange feeling, as if he wants to coax something out of her. 

It _is_ nice though and she sighs a little, her eyes fluttering closed. It's just for a second because she hears him suck in a breath and pull his hand back again, catching himself. When she opens her eyes, he's taking a full step back, half stumbling, his gaze unanchored, skittering everywhere but her as if he can't figure out where to look. 

“I’m your guide,” she announces brightly. 

"I-I gathered that," he replies in a strangled voice, shaking his head and rubbing his forehead.

A bit of annoyance comes over her. It can't be her. Her master has provided her with the finest of everything, the most expensive fabrics, the most precious jewels, but he says she has no need of such adornments. He's right as he always is, and when she's not on display, she dispenses with them knowing that she is exquisite just as she is, in skin and feathers alone. 

She's not on display now.

This strange outsider, she shakes her head, but it's all right. She has been tasked. She smiles one of her best smiles, close lipped just like she’s been taught, pushing her shoulders back with an accompanying toss of her hair. This usually charms whoever she speaks to, and with good reason. Her hair is shinier and redder than a muja fruit and her eyes are greener than the hummingbirds that flit around the palace gardens. She's been described as beautifully formed more than once, too. This is why her master often has her perch in view. 

None of those who stare up at her see her talons.

It's funny, the more she smiles, the more uncomfortable the Intruder looks, the more he seems to zero in at a spot just over her head. She turned to look herself, but there is nothing there, just a few nondescript trees. Pretty trees certainly, the palace grounds are nothing if not verdant and lush, but certainly nothing to warrant that much fixation.

She frowned at him. "What are you looking at?"

“Where are we?”

“The gardens of the Imperial Palace. You seek my master, right?” she beckons. “I’ll take you up to him.” 

"Wait--"

She's already spreading her wings with a snap. He steps away as she crouches and jumps high, flapping her wings. She's airborne then, shooting up and circling, building speed until she can dash down and grab him from behind, her arms wrapping just under his.

Normally whoever she picks up isn't exactly relaxed, but she means no harm to the Intruder so the tension she feels at his back and shoulders continues to surprise. 

Maybe it's the flying. "It's the shape of my wings," she explains, "curved front to back. When I flap them the air pushes me along, since there's more pressure from the air pushing up from the bottom on the wing than there is pushing down from the top of the wing."

He chuckles, a faint...incredulousness to it, which she doesn't understand either, but she senses some of the tension leave him. "I know what lift is." He tips his head back to look up at her and it's a full smile on his face this time. It's a nice smile, she thinks. That's more like how she's used to being looked at. "I fly too, you know," he adds.

"Not like this!" she replies with a laugh, because she knows every bit of the palace grounds, knows the flow of the wind currents, the best places to dive and soar, and now she feels the updraft on the trailing edge of her wings. It's just the smallest turn as they take it and rise higher still above the graceful fountains and manicured lawns, the spires of the Imperial Palace glinting in the sunlight towards the sprawling hunting grounds.

The vegetation is denser there, the trees forming a crowded lattice work that makes it difficult to fly. She smoothly lands on a thick branch and lets the Intruder go, snapping her wings back. She gestures to the branches, around them which form a gnarled stair. “We climb from here.”

He furrows his brow in the stairs' direction. “Your master lives here?”

She shakes her head. “He doesn’t live here, no. I do.” That wouldn’t make sense at all. “He visits to check on me, to tell me what he wishes of me, to send me out on errands.”

A troubled expression comes over his face. “Is this where you were born?”

She shakes her head again as she continues climbing. “Might as well be. I was taken in a long time ago.” They’re closer to the bridge.

She gets a sense that this means something to the Intruder because she stops and finds him maybe four steps below her, looking up. She smiled, tossing her head back a bit. “He's taken good care of me.”

A set of indecipherable expressions came over the Intruder’s face. “He raised you.”

Of course he did. Would she be what she is otherwise? 

“Come on. We can’t stay here all day.” She goes back to climbing up. It’s some time after that he calls again.

“What’s that smell?”

She really should be going further towards the bridge, but it was her master's idea and she _is_ proud of her work. It's unlikely the Intruder will tell anyone.

No one would believe him anyway.

“You want to see?” She darts out of the stair-like branches taking the path one provides further into an area, a few seconds in the leaves clear a bit to reveal the brambles, thorns like sharp pikes. Her last catch is now silent, thankfully. He made such a ruckus, and, really, she hadn’t made that big of a mess of him even though this is a new technique she's mastering -- all of his limbs are intact. Mostly. She continues to get better and better. Someday she'll be the best.

The Intruder lets out a loud gasp beside her. She turns her head in time to see him avert his eyes.

“I should have expected that,” he says in a strained voice. “Your _master_ had you do this.”

She's a bit disturbed at the way he said 'master' and frowns. Disrespectful. “Who else?” 

He closes his eyes for a second. It's not the reaction she expects.

“Murderers, thieves, traitors,” she recites and raises her head. “In my master’s name, this is just. There's no wrong in taking pride over justice meted.”

“Not like this,” he mutters from between clenched teeth. She knows that reaction well. Anger, but she is well-versed enough to know when it's directed at her and this... isn't. “All of this is wrong.”

His response doesn’t make sense, but she’s been tasked, so she lets it be. Just another bit of strangeness. “We should get back to the path.”

“How much of...this has he had you do?” he asks almost like he doesn't want to know.

She waves a hand, offended now. He can't possibly be implying she's an _amateur_. “I’ve been doing it for years.”

There’s more hesitancy and tension in his voice as if he's fearful of the answer. “How old are you exactly?”

She chuckles. He shouldn't be. Her master has told her to never answer that question. He doesn't ask again and they return to the stairs to continue the climb. The bridge should be up ahead and once they get to the other side she knows her master will be waiting.

They reach the top branch-stair and she pulls the leafed canopy that drips down aside and gasps. There’s no bridge, just a torn, rotted tree trunk.

“That can’t be. There’s supposed to be a bridge here and my master waits for me on the other side.”

The Intruder doesn't say anything, but there’s a weight to his silence she can’t put her finger on. He suddenly points up. The thick leafed canopy is now behind them, she should see sky and she does, but through something. Not trees. She squints. It looks like...netting?

“I don’t know what that is.”

"I do," he says grimly. “We’re in an aviary. A flying cage.”

“No,” she counters with a small laugh. The Intruder has a very weird sense of humor. “I live here. I can fly up as high as I want. How could this ever be a cage?” She laughs again. Maybe it's some type of construction going on at the Palace. That happens sometimes. 

When she cranes her neck up again there’s ashy clouds above the netting -- or what seems like netting. Looks like a downpour. That’s fine, she doesn’t mind. The Intruder steps closer behind her looking up at the sky too. There’s a vague rumble of thunder in the distance, and she doesn’t know why but she turns and shoves the Intruder back just as the first drops begin to fall. 

He ends up sprawled back under the canopy as a drop splatters on the ground a few inches from her foot, hissing strangely as it impacts the branch. Another hiss, an ensuing sting that becomes excruciating, and that doesn’t fade before there’s another. She smells burning feathers, burning skin, and can’t breathe over the sudden throbbing pain, tears prickling at the corners of her eyes. 

She turns her head and all she sees is smoke, a low moan that leaving her at the realization that it's her wing. Smoke is snaking up from her wing. A few seconds in the blistering pain and she realizes that what is falling is not rain. 

Not rain. It feels like...acid? Corrosive? 

She’s being hauled forward, lands on her knees beside the Intruder, his hand around her arm, barely tempering a yell as the movement jostles her wounded wing. “We have to go."

Her head is spinning. Her wings are burning, her back is burning. There’s some sort of acid rain falling. What is happening?

“I’ll call...my master,” she gasps. 

The Intruder’s face contorts. It’s pity, she thinks, surprised even in the midst of the burning. Why should he pity her? Her master can fix this. He can fix _anything_. His power is beyond measure, powerful enough to even give her wings.

She makes to stand on shaky feet. “I’ll go...call.”

The Intruder doesn't let go. “This is his answer.” His voice is even, but there’s something urgent in the way his eyes look into hers, in the tight grip he has around her arm. “There’s no more of him here.”

She pulls away, something in his words burns more than the wounds. “I have to...call.”

“We have to go further in, Mara. We can’t do anything here.”

She shakes her head, not understanding. “Stay here.” She backs up, hisses as more droplets sting against her wings against her skin. To her surprise, he follows after her. 

“No!”

“Never separate from your guide.” Incredibly, it’s a lopsided grin for a split second as he takes a step before a drop lands by his cheek, he gasps and turns his face in a swift movement, losing his footing. She dives, manages to grab hold of his sleeve, clamps her hand around his wrist. Acid begins to rain down in earnest.

The skin of her back feels like it’s being rendered. She's burning alive and the agony of it pulls out a low cry from her, wrests tears from her eyes. It hurts so much her vision goes fuzzy at the edges, her hold loosening against her will.

“Take us out of here,” she hears the Intruder say calmly -- as if he weren’t about to fall down a dark chasm, as if she weren't all that lies between him and the biting corrosive streaming down. Over the pain she thinks that abyss shouldn’t exist. There's no abyss here. She knows. She knows every inch of her home. She should know. It’s her own home.

“Then take it back.” The tone continues with that implacable calm, but his eyes press. “The mantra. We have to go.”

And if she were to stay here, to be melted away to nothing. Wouldn’t it be just as she deserves?

“Mara."

Is that what she deserves? 

_drip, drip_

She takes a deep breath, no.

No.

_My world. My will._

When she opens her eyes there's foggy glass. So foggy. Too foggy. 

She wipes at it and it’s still foggy. She can’t see, and she wants to see. She makes her eyes small and wipes again, looking at the glass, but it's just her. The glass is like a mirror, showing another her- not her. She wants to see past it. To the lights. She wants the lights. There’s a city, far away. And people.

There’s a broken part above where she's wiping. She did that. She doesn’t remember when or how, but you can’t see without the glass, so that part's dark.

There's a lot of dark parts. 

Someone else is on the glass mirror, but she doesn't stop wiping. Man. Taller than her. Everyone is so much taller than her. And older.

She makes her eyes small again. She can see more of the lights through where the mirror-man stands in the glass. Through him? Maybe. Just a little bit. She frowns, then wipes some more. The glass is still foggy. She can’t do anything about broken, about the dark parts, but wiping is okay, even if the glass is still yucky, cold and kind of wet under her hands. Maybe it’s her hands all wet. Can’t feel them much. That’s alright. Hurts less. She wipes her hands on her dress, staining it red; she's not supposed to do that, but she doesn't care, and goes back to wiping the glass. Maybe she'll see now.

The mirror-man stands very still like it’s the freezing game. Or maybe like he doesn’t exist. Like a ghost. If a ghost existed but it doesn’t. Everyone knows that.

“Are--are--” His voice sounds weird, like he’s cold. She’s cold too. You get used to it. “Are you the guide?”

She’s busy wiping. Again, and she’ll see. She wants to see.

The mirror-man is saying something, but she’s too busy to hear.

She just has to wipe just so. Try not to leave any streaks behind. She tries slow, but it doesn’t work. Streaks are still there. Still there. Can't see a thing. Stupid streaks. Why are they still there? Why is she still here? So unfair. It’s always unfair. She can’t do _anything_.

And then she's yelling, bangs one fist on the glass.

A loud crack. 

She steps away. “No-no-no-no...” Not again -- a line that she’d draw with plasti-crayon travels up on the glass. She reaches up and follows her finger over it with a whimper. Erase it. Please erase it. She didn’t mean it. “No-no-no.”

With a tinkling sound the glass she's tracing _breaks_ , and there’s just another hole. Another dark part. Her fault. She sniffs deep, her eyes itch, but maybe it’ll be different this time. Maybe she can put it back. She bends down to get the glass. 

A hand stops her. She pulls hers away and darts back. It’s the mirror-man, but real. He's not supposed to be here.

“Be careful with broken glass,” he says gently bending down to her height. “You’ve already cut yourself.” 

She scowls at him. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“Where is this?”

She shrugs. “Dunno.”

He stays quiet for a while, then he asks, “Were you born here?”

She shakes her head, straightens up and points to the shattered glass. “Over there.”

He looks through the hole surrounded by broken glass confused. Without the glass to show the lights, there’s just dark. He lifts his head up like he’s lost, stands up and follows the patchy glass up turning his head.

“A falling-star dome,” he whispers.

She doesn't understand, but she never understands anyway.

She does try to put the glass piece back. Her hand is wet and hurts, she can’t hold it too good. She just needs glue. She holds the glass piece in place while she turns to the mirror-man. Maybe he'll have some.

“You have glue?” The piece almost falls. She clutches harder at it and it _bites_ her. Her hand opens, the piece falling and crashing into the ground where there's no snow. She stares at what's left of it. Two fat red drops splatter beside her shoes.

Her eyes burn, run, and she bends down and covers her face. Crying is for babies and she’s big now, even if everyone is taller and older than her, but she can’t help it. The piece is broken inside her too, and water and snot leak out. She can't help it. She can't help anything at all.

He bends down and touches her shoulder. She startles and hiccups, but doesn't look up. “Glue. I-I-I need glue.”

His voice is so soft she barely hears it over her crying. “Why?”

“Put it back.” She can’t talk, feels like socks in her mouth. Too full of crying, nothing else fits. She wipes her face with her sleeve even though she’s been told not to, but her dress is stained already. They didn't want her anyway. She sniffs loud and shaky. "...put it back. It won’t. It won’t...go back.” 

“Why do you want to put it back?”

“Just..." Hard to talk. Hard to breathe. "...wanna see them...Don’t-don’t remember...what they...looked like." 

“Who?” His voice sounds like hers when she trips and falls, when she skins her knees, just before it really hurts. She feels his hand at her head like she's a soap bubble, soft like at any moment she could pop.

“Don't care...that they never wanted me." She sniffs and it's another sob. She's not a baby, she's not. "...wanna see them...don't remember them." She takes another shaky breath. "Not anymore."

Her cheek is suddenly pressed against the mirror-man's shirt, his arms tight across her back. She closes her eyes, trying to remember again because that is the most important thing of all. Something about them, anything. She tries her hardest, but all she sees are bubbles. They’re not at all, she knows. She knows they’re a...house. Houses? Nothing around them. Just sand and smoke, two suns still high up in the sky. Nobody’s home. Not anymore. 

The part of his shirt under her cheek is wet, but not wet like the glass. Not cold. She wants to leave this place. Could she go with him? Would he take her away?

It comes to her like the bubble-houses in the sand. He wants to.

And she’s shivering, scrambling away from his hold. She's been taken away before. Someone else had held her like that before.

_Dearest child, pity them that they didn't know the jewel they had in you. I do._

He's gone now, too. Everyone's gone.

“No.” All of her shakes, she's suddenly so cold her teeth are chattering. “You--you did this and--and now you want something from me.” 

He looks like he’s been caught. “No, Mara.”

“You can’t have it.” Inside her it’s like the round-it-goes of a spring-box crank. Turn, turn. Something waits. Turn. Any minute now. It hurts like a stomach ache and goes up to where her ribs are. Hurts worse. Like something inside that shouldn’t come out. She doubles over. Hard to breathe. She looks up at the mirror-man and she _knows_ him. Knows him through glass, backlit images in a dark, squalid room, his face as familiar to her as her own reflection...

“Mara!”

It hurts so much. She’s a piece of flimsy being torn into two and turns her head as she holds her hands around her middle. No, she's not a piece of flimsy at all, she thinks as the mirror her-not her on the glass goes blurry. Goes big. Rancor big, but long...tailed? Leather winged. Two-headed. 

Yellow-eyed.

She turns to the Intruder whose face freezes in disbelief as he takes a couple of instinctive steps back. 

When she screams, it comes out as a deafening roar.

\---

Another her comes to form a few paces away, watching. The Intruder shouldn’t have gotten this far, but no matter. This will be over soon enough. The beast was his own touch. Stare too long at the dark, the saying goes, and it starts staring at you _back_.

The hydra snaps forward and he falls back, rolls to miss the slam of it’s long tail on the ground. He springs back up, one of the falling-star dome shards in hand, dagger-sized. The hydra’s heads lunge at him from opposite sides. He ducks, extending a hand to stab the leftmost neck with the shard. The hydra’s right head dashes forward, but pain has made it sluggish, the jaws from its undamaged head easy to avoid. The tail less so as it sweeps the Intruder’s legs from under him and he falls again, jerking to his side as the tail crashes down at the spot where he’d been. The movement sends him close to the hydra’s wounded left head, black blood oozing down it. It’s too tempting an opening, even wounded as it is. Its jaws close in, snapping furiously. This should be it.

Inexplicably the beast’s right head screeches. When it pulls away, the Intruder scrambles to his feet. There’s more blood, a wider wound at hydra's left neck. A second thick shard lodged firmly in. There’s a harsh gargling sound and the left neck goes limp. 

What’s left of the beast betrays more shock than fury at first. It steps back, favoring it’s tail for the attack, moving it in a swiping, pendulous motion. The Intruder ducks, but the hydra swoops out a leathery wing. It hits true, its impact hard enough to fling him against the glass. The Intruder slides down but is up before long, if unsteady on his feet. The glass' cracks forms a cobweb-like pattern behind him a moment before it shatters. 

Its right wing dashes out, scoring another hit and sending the Intruder crashing down again. Taking prey on the ground as inviting as always, the hydra's remaining head darts out after him, snapping its jaws, but a burst of speed has him rolling forward towards the head, past it, to the hydra’s flanks.

Another pained screech, and this has taken an altogether different turn. The hydra inches back, another shard stuck in it like a glittering dagger. The Intruder stands, bold like one who thinks this is just.

She scoffs. No such thing exists here.

The beast is even more sluggish now that it lacks one of its heads, that it has a gaping wound at its flank. The Intruder keeps advancing. When did he grab hold of another shard and how? 

Oh, this will not do. 

She waits until the Intruder is upon the beast. His makeshift blade before him as he waits for the right moment for a strike. He is confident now. The hydra snaps forward and he slashes down. A serious wound now, any closer and the beast would have lost an eye. Perhaps more.

She’s not sure what would happen if she let him get that far. She won’t.

So the scene changes. Instead of having the hydra before him, there's only the child. Her long sleeved blue dress is blood-splattered, her green eyes wild, red locks an unruly, tangled mess, a cut dripping profusely from the side her neck. She crumples at the same time as his blade clatters to the ground, and he shoots forward to crouch by her, a hand at her face. Disbelief and horror is etched into the angles of his back as he leans over her small frame. Pitiful.

"It's still you," is his tormented whisper.

“Finish it,” she whispers back. “No time.”

Her eyes narrow. That annoying, insignificant child, that insubordinate part of her.

“No time.” 

“Mara." A pained recognition flowers. A flash of bodies strewn across a burning battlefield. The gruesome cataclysm of a world. 

_None of them had wanted this. None had volunteered for this. It was not their fault and he killed them. He killed all of them._

That makes her smile. How pleasing that this is what he should see as he looks on the child. Splendid.

He bends his head down. "I'm so sorry, I -- I --"

She moves silently and when her hand wraps around the shard or when it _becomes_ a dagger in her hands, he doesn’t hear it either. Of course he doesn’t, for she’s The Hunter at the center of the maze.

He does hear it when she whispers, “You’re a long way from home, Jedi” as she sinks the blade into his side.

And the child stares up at him mute, expression stricken. 

“I--"

“The child can’t help you,” she hisses at his ear, twisting the blade. "She can’t help herself." 

_Bodies in the fields, seizing, convulsing, dying by the thousands under a cruel, immolating sun_. 

“This is _my_ world. _My_ will.”

He screams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off, thanks to Jaded for hand holding and lots of "gurl, follow your narrative kinks" admonishments.
> 
> 1\. This part draws from the story "First Contact," where Mara meets Karrde for the first time (while she's working as a hyperdrive mechanic at a place holding illegal safaris), saves his life when he tangles with the resident crime lord, and in return gets offered a job. More details [here](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/First_Contact). That's the basis for the first ring. If you want a fanfic take on it [this](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11217617/1/Beauty-Enough) is a classic. Mara pov. Super canon compliant. I'd read this over the original story. 
> 
> 2\. The second ring is all mine. I know -- something I didn't cobble from an element of the EU. Gasp. 
> 
> 3\. The falling-star dome that is the setting of the third ring is one of the few significant character background moments given to Mara in _Choices of One_. Basically one of the few memories she has of her childhood was breaking it trying to see how it worked and getting into trouble for it. Fanon has run with it. Obviously I was going to use it because I've never met an overwrought metaphor I didn't like. 
> 
> 4\. (Battle) hydras do exist in the Star Wars universe (they're part of the fauna of Yavin 4 natch). I like monsters. *shrugs*
> 
> 5\. Two lines have made it here from _Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor_. For the purposes of this fic all you need to know is that some dark sider zombified thousands of Force sensitives and Luke ended up having to mercy kill thousands of them when he broke their connection with the baddie. As I mentioned in the comments last time, it was a Bad Scene. More details [here](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_of_Mindor).
> 
> This part is dense, but here's hoping it could be followed. *fingers crossed* As always I encourage all sorts of "Frangi, wtf is this." There's a lot of fuckery here tho so you might wanna narrow it down for me. *wince*


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From Matthew Stover's _Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor:_
> 
> He stayed with them while every stormtrooper in the entire system, all at once in all their thousands, sagged and shuddered.  
> And died.
> 
> Luke felt every death.
> 
> It was all he could do for them.

_I could give you petty rhymes_  
_Of worlds that I contrived_  
_They're in my sleep, my dreams, I speak them_  
_Slow so you can read_  
_And not stand back and stare and fear_  
_Foolish devouring things_ __

  


Mara wakes up to the sound of wind through trees. The air is pleasantly cool, a faint scent of pine in it. She sits up, realizing she’s on a blanket and there's another on her lap, the material softer than synthfur. Around her, there’s an expanse of deep green grass and above the sky is blue, streaky milky white clouds across it. To the distance there’s some mountains, their mossy tops peeking out of thin fog. Even though she’s awake, she feels as if she’s dreaming. Where is she?

“Salis D’aar.”

She startles at Skywalker’s voice, not having seen him. He’s sitting a few feet from her on the grass, wearing the nondescript blue jumpsuit she last remembered him having in the Skipray--

“I’m dreaming,” she says. 

Skywalker nods. “In a way.”

They were going to do something...Mara only gets blurry images, sinking, burning, and blood. Nothing is clear. Everything is too far.

“I wouldn’t try to get it back. It’s not...It’s not helpful.”

She waits for some anger at that almost by reflex because that’s what usually comes when he speaks in that just-trying-to-help tone, but nothing comes. She feels very tired suddenly.

“Salis D’aar." Mara thinks back. “Where is that?”

“Bakura.”

She closes her eyes, getting the feeling that she _knows_... “Wild Space. Repulsorlift manufacturing. Metals. And,” she opens her eyes, “some fruit exports.” She pauses. All the images in her head now are so strange. “The Bakura campaign." That had to be it. "I saw holos.”

Skywalker doesn’t say anything.

It doesn't feel right though.

“You didn’t stay very long, but you liked it. Salis D’aar. You wished you could have stayed longer. Things were simple then, and there was a girl--” Mara stopped. “A girl with mismatched eyes.” She stops and frowns. “I didn’t read that. This is your dream. Your unconscious.”

"My head," he corrects mildly. "Not my unconscious. We're in...shallower waters." 

She feels her brow furrow. “Why did you bring me here?”

“Where you were became...toxic. It's a good idea to let it settle deep before you wake up. Minimizes nightmares later on.”

Again that vague feeling sinking, burning, and blood. It comes to her finally, the echo of her dead master...

“Is it gone?” Mara whispers.

He shakes his head. “There's something you need to know.”

"What?”

“What happened to you.”

Mara shifts on the blanket. “Why in a dream? Why in your dream? Your head? Why not wait until I wake up?"

"To give you something."

She's sure her confusion shows in her face. "Give me something. Here? In your head?"

“It’s best,” Skywalker seems to proceed cautiously. “If we begin from the beginning...the work of a Sith lord on a little girl.”

She finds herself gripping the blanket tightly. She knows immediately she doesn’t want to hear this. “No."

Skywalker looks pained. “You have to, Mara,” he says very gently. “At least like this.”

She shakes her head, but he continues, “You said he could speak to you from wherever. That you could hear his voice, his call. You said it was your --”

She finishes the sentence with him in a hushed voice. “One great talent.”

“It wasn’t. Not at first.” He takes a deep breath. “It was done over years probably. A piece of himself repeatedly latched to the most vulnerable part of you...sown... to a wound he himself made when he took you away.”

The words stop making sense to her, there’s the distant rumble of thunder. 

“No,” she says again, her voice growing stronger. “He raised me. He _loved_ me. He took me in when no one want--" Mara breaks off in horror. These are not things to say, not out loud. Never. And never to him. 

She shuts her eyes and makes her voice durasteel. "He didn't take me away."

“You were probably five or six, maybe young--”

“Lies!" she snaps, opening her eyes and fixing him with a virulent glare. "Only Jedi did that.” Lightning snaps into being across the heavy clouds over the mountains, jarring her. She’s gripping the blanket tighter still. Her voice goes shaky. It barely feels like her own when she says, “It’s coming for me here too.”

“Not here,” Skywalker soothes. "It has no influence here." He continues quietly, “There are certain things you know, Mara, certain things that can’t be taken from you, not fully.”

She shakes her head firmly. “We’re done. It didn’t work.”

His voice grows firm. “What he left in you is poison.”

She looks out to the mountains. The tops are no longer visible, the fog indistinguishable from the clouds. Rain must be falling over there. “This was a mistake,” she mumbles.

“That’s all he’s left you --”

“Because I failed him!” she shouts, meeting his eyes with the usual burn at her chest. That's good. It's better than _anything_ else. “If I had succeeded I would still have everything. Now I have nothing. It’s not enough to murder my master and take my life from me, is it Jedi? You want to tarnish what I had with lies too, you and that Chiss bastard.” She grits her teeth. “I won’t let you.” 

“You know what a lie feels like, Mara." There's a press in his gaze, an appeal. "I can’t lie to you, not here, even if I wanted to.”

“Convenient,” she spits. "Why should I believe the Jedi who killed--

“I didn’t--" he interrupts. "I was responsible for his death but it wasn’t at my hands.”

“What difference does it make?”

His usual calm crumbles into a crestfallen look. “I thought...being here would help...”

“Send me back.”

“Wait.” Something shimmers and takes form in front of her, hovering in the air. A...bubble?

She tilts her head, regarding it with suspiscion. “What is it?”

“It’s all I could reconstruct,” he says, regret underpinning the words. “Out of the fragments he left behind.”

She peers into it, curious in spite of herself. Past the iridescence of the bubble’s surface there’s a blurry image of lengthened shadows under an afternoon sun. Something about it calls to her and her heart is suddenly in her throat.

“It’s yours,” Skywalker urges. “Take it.”

She finds herself reaching out towards it.

 _A big loud shiny ship behind her and the sun glare in front of her so she makes her eyes small but still can't see and she knows she has to go but itsmybabywhydoeshewantmybaby and so much crying that it’s confusing because this is a happy time and she is wearing her favorite dress and pleasedonttakemybabyshesmybabymybaby she's only going to be happier everyone is going to be happier and she turns to the ship_ \--

Mara comes to gasping loudly. There’s a bright burst of some undescribeable emotion and she curls tight where she lies on the bunk, violent sobs tearing through her. Dimly, she registers movement by the door at the corner of her eye. Skywalker, her groggy brain pieces amid the disorientation, even as she tries to get the wracking sobs under control. 

In between, she heaves out, “What...did...you...do?”

The wave passes after a couple of minutes, but she feels as if her insides have been scraped raw. A few more minutes situate her. Taking a couple of shaky breaths and sniffing, she wipes her face on her sleeve and checks the chrono. It takes her a while, but she finally calculates that they lost five hours. She doesn't have the cuffs on anymore. 

“How do you feel?” Skywalker asks tentatively. He'd been waiting by the side of the bunk.

“Is it gone?” Her voice sounds oddly slurred. Surely if she feels like this it must be. She should feel embarrassed, but that display didn't feel like her, it felt involuntary, a purely instinctive response. Her head's still swimming as if she'd just been jarred awake. The last she remembers clearly is settling in for meditation, the rest is an incomprehensible blur.

“Some of it.” There’s reluctance in Skywalker's voice. “You should be able to control it now." He leans in and puts a hand on her shoulder, making as if to help her sit up. Mara jerks away sharply from him, pushing herself up on muscles that feel too sore.

"Here.” Skywalker had given her some distance. He's extending an arm, pressing a water bottle into her hands. 

Mara reaches out and, to her horror, struggles to get a grip on it, her fingers scrabbling without getting enough of a hold for a few anguished seconds. Skywalker leans forward and she'd bark at him to get away from her, but she's too busy trying to close her hand on the right amount of bottle until she awkwardly does. By then, he's pulled himself away and Mara brings the bottle very slowly, very carefully to her mouth. As the does, she catches sight of what looks like a trailing bloodstain on the pillow, too low on it to be from her head wound. She feels up the bandage, which seems to be in place and looks up inquiringly, belying the way her muscles lock up, the way her breathing speeds up.

“Nosebleed,” Skywalker supplies quickly, again with that reluctant voice. “The first seizure was...violent.”

She concentrates on putting the cap back on the water bottle, which seems to take forever, her fingers mashing together clumsily. That done, she slowly bends down to put the bottle on the floor beside the bunk. She fails and it falls. She curses under her breath as Skywalker bends to pluck it up before it rolls under the bunk, and plants it unobstrusively on the side. 

She lets herself turn to what he'd just said. “The first?”

He nods. "Of two."

Mara blows out a breath. That explains it. She's not sure whether this makes her feel better or worse. Not yet. She tries to enunciate. It's easier now, thankfully. “The beginning.” 

Skywalker rubs at his forehead and she realizes he doesn’t look that great either. There’s shadows under his eyes, which look more than a bit bloodshot. His skin’s gone sallow and his shoulders sag a bit.

“Wait. The bubble.” She looks around the cabin.

“Yeah,” he assures her. "We're in it."

She breathes out a sigh of relief, and now she can go back to the subject. “Some...of the echo is gone?”

Skywalker winces. “It’s not...it’s not an echo,” he says as if it pains him.

Mara stares. She’d thought they’d gone through this. “The Emperor,” she says. "Is dead."

“Yes, yes, he is,” he replies. “It’s not that. It’s that it's...” He swallows. “It’s a part of you. The echo.”

Mara turns this over in her mind. Not for very long. She doesn't understand it, but she doesn't have to. That changes nothing. “Okay. Take the rest out.”

“I can’t.” Skywalker's voice loses some of that evenness, horror seeping into it like he’s seen something ghastly. “It’s embedded within you, woven into you. It’s no longer him anymore, it was once...now you’ve...internalized it. It’s like a...a diseased root growing from the wrong place.”

Still changes nothing. “So take it out,” she repeats flatly.

“I _can’t_." The words leave him in a rush and he paces a little even in the narrow space of the cabin. "Not without hurting you. It was just taking off part of it and I--I didn’t know how deep it went. I thought without meltmassif there’d be no way...I should have suspected." Skywalker stops and flashes her a contrite look. "I should have known. I’m sorry.” 

Only a fraction of what he’s saying makes sense and she _tries_. Mara shifts, stretching her legs and breathes deep, maybe there's something in her head that will shed some light, but when she thinks back there’s only a jumble of images, all indistinct. She feels the creep of a headache and stops.

“The beginning," she prompts. "What did you do?”

“I got half of it off, before it showed me it was you.” Skywalker closes his eyes. “It started pulling from my head until it knocked me out of yours, and then you were convulsing. I...managed it, but then you had another episode. That one was easier to deal with. I moved the ysalamiri so you could get some rest.”

Mara rubs at her temples with both hands. _Half of the echo off_ is what she hears. Now she can control the impulse. She’d deal with the rest later when Karrde isn’t locked up in a cell, the minutes ticking down to an imperial interrogator droid.

“Okay,” she murmurs. “Let me see what it's like now.”

Skywalker's eyes widen. “Now?”

“You’re thinking when we get to the depot?" she retorts sharply. There's no time for coddling. "Would that be before or after we try to steal a shuttle? Maybe after I try to shoot you in the face?”

Skywalker narrows his eyes at her. His voice is the sharpest she’s heard it. “I’m thinking after you get some _sleep_. After what you’ve been through--” 

“I’ll sleep better once I know what the inside of my head feels like outside of the bubble.”

He's radiating disapproval. She couldn’t give a kriff. She speaks low and very slowly, "Let's. See. What. It's. Like. Now."

His face grows even more pinched, but he extends an arm to the far side of the cabin. 

“The ysalamiri's influence cuts over there.”

“Thank you.” Mara stretches and cracks her back, then gingerly eases herself off the bed. It doesn't matter that she's sore and fatigued, everything hinges on this.

She tries her hardest not to brush past Skywalker in the cramped space of the cabin. He moves back to give her room, but it doesn't really help. There's no blasted reason she should be this aware of him either; they're still under the bubble, except that even without the Force she has the eerie feeling that he's seen too much, knows too much. She feels more settled once she's at the far end of the cabin, not nearly far enough, but the meters between them are some comfort. 

It's not for very long though, because while the Force was hadn't been anything to register coming in and out of the cargo hold save for the echo, now it feels like she's got a sheet over her face and water's pouring over her too fast for her to breathe. It’s awful.

She shoves the suffocating feeling aside, but Skywalker picks up on it even being outside of the bubble. The irritation fades from his face until it just oozes concern as he says, “Are you--”

He breaks off when she narrows her eyes, raises her hand, turning up the palm and slowly hooking her index finger, wordlessly beckoning him over. Final ingredient.

Mara feels it like a blast of energy too once he steps out of the ysalamiri’s range. It’s all she can do not to toss herself back into the bubble. It's not the killing impulse, but it's not that much better. There’s something inescapably cloying about his Force presence that makes the situation about ten times worse. She doesn’t know if it’s a side effect of him wrangling with her mind. Probably. She closes her eyes, trying to recenter herself. 

“Mara, you don’t--”

She doesn't open them. “For Force’s sake," she mutters. "Shut up, Skywalker.”

It takes no time at all. She’d just finished snapping, and it’s a thrumming at the base of her skull. At least she managed to get some sort of balance, so she can think at the echo, go, do your worst.

It builds fast enough to make her eyes fly open, spikes up to pounding inside her head, and she bends over wincing.

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER  
YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER  
YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER

But it stalls after several loops, and she knows there’s a headache, but there’s also an accompanying feeling that its plateaued. This is how it’s going to stay. She focuses on her hands. The compulsion has been dialed back. It’s never going to be pleasant to have that in her head, but she’s no longer playing puppet to it. 

Mara can’t pinpoint where the laugh starts from or why, but once she starts she can’t stop. Maybe she’s unraveling, but it feels like a tiny victory, the first she’s had since Thrawn had entrapped her into betraying Karrde, since he'd forced them to go on the run, since the whole damn cycle started. That relief lasts up until the images rain down in quick succession, memories of Varonat, of the morodins, of the palace aviaries, of broken trinkets, planets being ripped apart, bodies convulsing in the fields, shadows against an afternoon sun, all to the sound of high wrenching sobs _mybabymybabyohgodswhyishetakingmybaby_ \--

Something’s burning.

She’s gone.

\--

There’s blue sky over her when Mara wakes up again. She blinks and sits up. She’s on a blanket on the grass. The scene is familiar. Salis D’aar again.

“What was that?” she asks. “Why am I back in your head?”

“Another seizure,” Skywalker explains from where he's sitting beside her. “Well, the beginnings of one. I’ve brought you here for the same reason as last time. I'd like for things to settle a bit.”

She squints. “Why are...things...unsettled?”

There's a shadow of a crooked smile at her borrowing the vague phrasing. “Everything is connected, so it's difficult to isolate just one piece. It might have to do with a portion of the voice being off."

It comes back to her. "Half of it is gone, right."

Skywalker nods. "Something like that."

"But it's causing seizures again...or it didn't stop..." 

"These last two times I think that it may have had something to do with the memory I put back together--”

Mara's head snaps at that. “Memory?”

“Your parents.”

She shakes her head quickly. “I don’t have parents.”

Skywalker's face falls, but he goes on, "I think...the voice pushes back against the --"

"Images," she intervenes. 

He looks as if he's about to correct her, but doesn't. "Its dark...energy turns inwards. Like a...part of your mind turning against itself." 

She stays quiet for a few seconds. “If that’s the cause of the problem then take it back. You can do that, right? This was something you put in my head.”

“It was already there,” he clarifies, still with that heartsick expression. “I just rearranged to make--”

“Just get rid of it. It’s interfering with how I function,” Mara says resolutely. “We can’t afford that.”

“It’s yours. He--”

“I don’t want to hear it.” She raises her voice, put off by all his objections to a simple solution. “I don’t,” she says through gritted teeth. “Save your heroics for Karrde and your republic. I don’t need them. I asked you to take the echo off, not for you to meddle in my head. You can’t take off the echo, fine. Then take this back. I don’t want it.”

“Mara,” Skywalker whispers, and there's that undertone of be-reasonable. She's done with being reasonable. None of this is reasonable.

“I’m not going to put Karrde at risk for whatever you’ve stuck in my head.” The words are out of her mouth and she regrets them. Since when does she have to explain herself to Skywalker of all people? She looks away towards the foggy mountains.

"I didn't put _anything_ in your head. It was already there," he insists, “It's important. I think the memory is a way out--”

“We’re running out of time," she snaps. She’s not buying whatever Skywalker’s selling, not now, not ever. Especially not this. "Take it back, break it up again, whatever. I can't have it interfering.”

He looks at her for a long moment. “I’m not going to do that.”

She turns to him sharply. “What?”

“The memory is a _key_ ," Skywalker presses. "Even if you don’t recognize it as such. You will and it’s _yours_.”

She grinds her teeth at his all-omniscient tone. “Okay, we’re done.”

“No, let’s--”

Mara curls a fist on her lap. Karrde's life. Her life. 

“I shouldn’t have expected any better,” she says under her breath. Rage coils sudden and hot to the sound of the _drip drip_ of that run-down shack she'd called home just over six months ago. Of course, this pompous, self-righteous Jedi would presume to know what was best for her, even if it meant condemning Karrde to death in the process. What did he know about losing everything, being buried alive by powerlessness, reduced to a mere shadow --

“Mara--”

Karrde might as well be dead. Her life in shambles. Is there any coming back from this?

The skies overhead darken. 

No. She's dead.

It comes to her as the images of a disintegrating planet, she finds if she pulls a bit more, there’s a name.

Mindor.

“Mara.” A note of wariness comes into Skywalker's voice, but she’s already there. Or rather, _they_ are already here. The bodies in the fields.The scorching radiation from the nearby star, blazing through the system, tearing through Mindor, as thousands drop near instantaneously, writhing in their dark armor. Dying.

“You did that,” she hisses accusingly. “Thousands. Puppets, all of them. Innocents. You knew what was best for them too, didn't you?”

Skywalker now stands before her in an orange Rebel flightsuit. He takes a step back, trepidation on his face.

“Is that why you stopped halfway with me? So it wouldn't be fifty-thousand and _one_...?”

His face constricts. “No. Mara--”

"No. It would be more than that. No one knows the real number, do they? All records lost." Her voice drips with contempt. “They wanted to give you a medal for it. I saw the holos, but I didn’t know.” She laughs darkly. “You felt them all die! How would that ever help? You still killed them. All of them.”

There’s a pleading note underneath as his expression grows increasingly harrowed, eyes squeezing shut as he turns his head as if he can't bear to look. “Stop.”

“It didn’t. How long before you slept without hearing their screams? Weeks? Months? It was _years_ , wasn't it?”

It’s no longer a note, it’s an appeal. It should be heartrending, Skywalker's shoulders are slumped as he covers his face, muffling his voice. “Stop it. Please.”

She feels it clearly as a wound now, scar tissue, and she's tearing to get at _everything_ , the boundless sorrow and remorse, the bitterness of there being _no other way_. He couldn’t find any other way, no matter how hard he’d looked...

"Is that what I am? Atonement?"

It even hurts her too in a way, but distantly, because she might be caged up and powerless, but finally there’s a blade in her hands. Finally. She doesn’t care who she uses it on in the end, as long as she uses it, as long as it’s her, and she pulls on more, claws at more. 

“You don't have to bother. What’s one more, what's a few _thousand_ more, right? Your best trick.” 

He gasps and looks up, pain stretching across his face, glimmering in his eyes.

Mara stands, dead to it, as the gusts of windblown grit pick up and whoosh all around them. “It’s a really good trick, Skywalker.”

She’s not afraid. Not of the collapsing bodies around her, nor the killing sun above. Taspan, it comes to her. A whole system reduced to debris. But this is neither her nightmare, nor her memory. She is dead to all of it. Her own world has already gone up in flames. It's not even the first time.

“One small move. One choice and thousands die.” The ground rumbles and quakes, splitting open with a thunderous roar close but not where they stand. Not yet.

He shakes his head, eyes haunted. “I never--I never wanted it to be like that.”

Bodies fall into the crevices to be consumed by the swirling melted rock below.

“You did that. You did all of it.” She doesn’t have to think of the words, she’s ventriloquizing from a mass of snagged, tangled feelings, a web of horrors. His. She feels every word hit true because of it.

“No. I never wanted this.” There's another plea in the next. To himself maybe, _please believe me_. “There was no other way--”

Because if there was...

"There's no atoning," she pronounces as the ground trembles more. "There's no redressing." And to herself, she says, _no justice_. "Everything will always end...just like this."

"No." His voice is as thick as the molten rock that is flung out from the superheated mantle in bright arcing flashes across the hellish landscape. "It can't."

The coup de gras is her own breathless addition, cobbled from his own disgust. Think her master a monster now, will he? He doesn't have a monopoly on the destruction of worlds.

“He would be so proud.” 

A whirlwind of revulsion and loathing at the words gathers around them as ash falls from the dark skies. Mara closes her eyes and throws her head back like a child trying to catch snowflakes with her tongue, but really she's just waiting for the ground under her to go to pieces. She feels the vibrations, knows that they're on the last unbroken stretch of solid ground. It won't be long now.

Mara hears the crack before she feels the ground under her loosen. She's just waiting to fall. Any second now.

She feels a touch at her forehead, opens her eyes to find Skywalker, an arm extended before him, his fingers at her forehead. A determined look blazes across his face, even as everything around them is aflame. The ground does shatter beneath her then, collapses into a river of melted rock at the bottom of the chasm below, but inexplicably she remains in the air, hair whipping about wildly, impossibly held in place by the press of his fingertips against her forehead.

“It won't end like this." There's an unshakeable conviction in his eyes as he looks up at her. "Never again. And I am _nothing_ like your master.”

Mara gasps awake, shaking violently, to soft pressure on her forehead. She snaps forward and the touch is gone, leaving her curled up so her forehead is touching her knees which are drawn rigidly against her chest. She manages one breath before everything inside her wrings tight. It's like last time, the thought flashes. She pushes the wave of feeling back, shoving it down with all she's got, losing all sense of time and her surroundings while she does.

The feeling finally recedes, leaving her breathing shakily, shivering hard; it takes her a while to stretch out, to lift her head in the effort to orient herself. She's still trembling slightly, groggy and with a million buzzing insects in her skull.

“Are you alright?” Skywalker sits in front of her on the bunk, rubbing at his forehead tiredly. 

"Did I have another...?" she whispers through cracked lips. At least she's not slurring this time.

"A seizure?" Skywalker shakes his head and gets off the bunk, putting more distance between them. "No. Not this time."

Mara sighs and slowly angles herself to check her chrono. Her addled brain takes a while to compute, but finally pieces up they used up three more hours.

“We still have time for some rest. We’re going to need it,” he adds. One good look at him and she agrees, going by him. He looks as if he hasn’t slept for days. She imagines she probably looks worse. She feels worse. There's faint twitches in her limbs still. 

No one is ever messing with her mind ever again.

Ever.

A few minutes and finally all the tremors have died down. She gradually sits up, pushing her hair back from her face, and tries to remember anything, but predictably everything is hazy. If she thinks about the disorientation too much, panic will slam into her, so she gives up and looks over at Skywalker. 

“What happened? The images--"

“The _memory_ ," he interrupts firmly, a flash of something in his eyes she has no energy to parse. "Is still there and whole, but buried. I've put a sort of...temporal lock on it. That should prevent the seizures.”

She’s functional again. Okay. She would test it, but her head has a phantom headache edging into the tangible. It can wait.

“We can..." Her voice is barely over a whisper. "We can do some more proximity tests in a bit.” A sigh leaves her and she closes her eyes, letting her head slump forward slightly.

"Are you okay?" 

It feels like a loaded question. All of her feels wrung dry as if she's reached some limit and she's just going on fumes. 

"Mara?"

She opens her eyes and makes herself nod. 

"Yeah," she forces the word out. "Just...some rest would be good." 

There’s a bit of hesitation, but he nods. “You should eat something. I’ll get you a mealpack.”

She sighs and shakes her head. There's a gummy feeling in her eyes and her skin feels clammy. "Not right now. I'm...I'm going to take a shower." 

“I could stay here...in the bubble.”

She passes a hand down her face. She doesn’t feel up to handling more, but she can’t put off dealing with the echo if it should surface. They're running out of time.

“No, I...shouldn't hide from it. After everything...it has to be better.” There’s a vague ring of hopeful thinking she doesn’t like, but she has to hope now. For Karrde’s sake. For her own.

Skywalker turns his head. “You’re sure?”

Mara nods and he walks out into the corridor, sparing a couple of worried glances her way. She waits a couple of seconds, then grabs her things, ambling to the ‘fresher, every step as if she's lifting fuel drums with her legs. Skywalker must have moved the nutrient frame because she feels the Force return when she's halfway there. She has to stop and breathe, momentarily overwhelmed. Once she gets her bearings she continues, mechanically going through her evening ritual once she's in the 'fresher. Dread gathers in her, tension and questions with every passing second: Can she handle it now? Could they do this again if she can't? How much more can she take? How much before time's up?

The seconds lengthen into minutes...there’s no echo, nothing. 

She doesn’t want to hope. It’s a useless exercise for her, but Mara crouches down as the shower runs, and they surface -- all the unnameable feelings from when she woke up, feelings attached to half-formed images too diffuse to make out. She lets them, burying her face in her hands, and sobbing out all her inability to understand until there’s even less of her left. 

After, Mara finishes up and gathers her things listlessly. When she gets out she feels eyes on her and the blaze of Skywalker's presence through the Force, bright enough to let her know he's near. She turns her face to see him staring at her from the end of the corridor. Part of her wants to run towards her cabin, towards the bubble, but she forces herself to stay in place. She _needs_ to know if this worked. Everything hinges on it. Everything.

So she stays and so does he. There’s maybe fifteen to twenty feet between them, a bit of a shadow to the angles of his face. She has a vague inkling that she might have hurt him somehow, but that’s a ludicrous thought. She can’t even pinpoint the root of the feeling or how. When the echo had her strike with the fusioncutters, he’d been two moves ahead of her. Untouchable. He's just tired from whatever sorting and shelving he's been doing in her head to make the echo manageable. It's been hours of it, anyone would be.

Mara finds herself calling out exhaustedly, “Why are you even doing this, Skywalker?”

“It’s not your fault.”

That doesn’t answer her question. Not the one she asked out loud anyway. She has so many other questions simmering that she doesn’t want to think about which of them all this could answer. She can't. Not now.

Mara nods like she knows what he’s talking about.

It hits then and she gasps.

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER  
YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER  
YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER

She closes her eyes and breathes over the now-familiar pounding at the back of her skull, but fractured, less loud. She’s able to squeeze her eyes shut and just let it loop, a hand on the 'fresher door until it dies down. It’s not pleasant by any means, but she can deal with it even in this pathetic, wrung out state. It ends, and she rubs at her temples, slowly straightening up.

“Is it over?” Skywalker asks.

Mara nods.

“Good. I left a mealpack and another water bottle beside your bunk. The ysalamiri is in there too -- no sense putting yourself through what's left if you don't have to.” He turns to go back to the hold.

“Skywalker,” she calls out.

He turns around. She means to say, “It’s less,” maybe "thank you," but instead what comes out is “I’m sorry.” 

It’s true, she finds; at the end of the day this is more than either of them bargained for. What he owes Karrde is not what she does.

He looks a bit at a loss there, but comes back with, “Go eat something and get some rest. I checked and we drop out of hyperspace in about eight hours.”

She nods and he disappears into the hold.

\--

**Day 4**

Mara wakes up surprisingly refreshed even though she can’t shake some strange dreams. All of it is vague enough to forget, even if certain discomfort remains. It's not too different from knowing you had a nightmare without knowing what it was about. By the time she's done with her morning routine though, all of her unease has faded.

She goes to the cockpit to check on their course, idly chewing on a ration bar.

Skywalker walks in not long after, looking well-rested himself, which is a relief considering what they have ahead of them, but he wears a preoccupied expression that immediately raises her hackles.

“We’re close,” she announces, getting out of her seat. “I should move out the ysalamiri out back again. Just to..." She waves a hand in the direction of her head. "Get used to it.”

“Wait. There’s one last thing. I mentioned it, but it was in passing and we were both tired.”

She squares her shoulders. “What?”

“It’s a temporal lock,” Skywalker says. “What I put on your memory.”

She cocks her head. “What keeps me from having seizures.” She isn’t sure how to take the information. “How long?”

“Not sure. Not soon. It’s...buried. Something like that, but it’ll come back up eventually.”

“And when it does?”

His expression grows troubled. “I’m not sure.”

She something about the echo pushing back comes back to her. Her mind turning against itself. It's a death sentence, she realizes.

The price of loyalty.

“Okay,” she murmurs. There is nothing more to say. The time for blaming is over. If there ever was such a time. It doesn't matter. Now there’s just accounts to close.

“Mara, I --”

She shakes her head, she has no use for misplaced apologies. “It’s fine.” 

Skywalker has that look he's had for what seems like the duration of the entire trip -- as if there's so much he wants to say and is pushing it back. There's a tinge of resignation to his expression that she's not sure she has seen before. Maybe he's come to some realization, some decision.

Maybe its that this is as much as he can do for her, which is fine. She has no bitterness or recriminations when she says, “You’ve done enough...more than...more than you had to. As long as we get Karrde out, it’s fine.” And why should she be bitter? She sees it so clearly now.

She’d failed her master; this is what she always deserved, the long-deferred consequences. She could see everything in motion from when Carniss had pushed the muzzle of her blaster against her back. It's no longer good or bad; it just is.

Mara leaves for her cabin and takes the ysalamiri back to the hold. She stays there for a bit, enjoying the calm. The echo is more muted going by what she experienced yesterday, but it's still not pleasant by any means. It won't ever be pleasant. 

A part of her says, not echo, _voice_. 

_As in he sewed his voice into you._

Mara closes her eyes and rubs her face, all of her weighed down suddenly. She's tired, she thinks. Maybe after they get Karrde out she can ask for a vacation. Having his crew watch her collapse, drooling and convulsing at the _Wild Karrde_ ’s bridge sounds like a horrible, degrading way to go. Chibias wouldn’t be terrible. Or Hesperidium. She might have enough credits to go there now. If not she's sure she could ask Karrde for a bonus. She just got promoted, after all. He wouldn't even think twice. It’s a lovely resort moon. 

Her master had always loved it.

_He ripped something out and sewed his voice into you in its place. No talent at all._

It is a bit on the dull side though. Chibias might be better.

_Like a tunic he’d torn, sowing an inside pocket in the hole. A patch that didn't belong there._

The Symphony plays there sometimes. The last time she went, it was painful, but it doesn’t have to be now. Everything is fine now.

_Like a thing._

Before she knows it, she’s forcibly ripping off the ysalamiri from the branch. It hisses and tries to claw itself deeper on the frame. Mara fishes out her vibroblade. She doesn’t really know the finer points of its anatomy, so there’s no finesse to anything, especially not to its increasingly sharp and desperate squeals as her vibroblade does its work until it quiets, certainly not to the wet splat its head makes on the durasteel, nor the sticky mess on her hands.

The Force is back and it does feel a little like drowning again, but it’s less. She’ll get used to it. She can keep her head up for this long.

She doesn't feel anything as she looks at the pulpy remains of the ysalamiri, barely recognizable now as something that once lived, and disposes of it, cleaning all evidence of its existence save the frame with her usual care. It served its purpose, now it’s done. 

_Like a thing._

She doesn’t need it anymore. Mara wipes down her vibroblade and puts it away. She won’t need it from now on. She’s not going to hide anymore.

Mara swallows and goes to the 'fresher to wash her hands. There’s still some slight swelling at the side of her head, but nothing to draw attention, she thinks as she rebraids her hair.

They need to be vigilant as they drop into the system and change vectors to the moon. She makes a mental note to remind Skywalker as she walks to her cabin and picks up her things, including her holdout and its holster.

She finally returns to the cockpit and drops into the pilot’s couch.

“We’re about to drop off,” Skywalker tells her, standing up from the copilot’s seat. “I’m going to go get my things from the hold.”

“We’ll have to change--”

“Yeah, veer off to the moon. I remember. We’ll have time to input the new vectors, don't worry.”

Mara scans over the flight instruments while he’s gone. He comes back and takes his seat just as the Skipray drops into the crowded Wistril system. 

“No sign of the _Chimaera_ ,” Skywalker says after doing a sensor scan, a faint smile coming over his face.

She’s pleased, but this is nothing to celebrate. Not yet. Mara sets course for the moon and goes over again how they’ll hijack the shuttle. It won’t be difficult once the _Chimaera_ gets its replenishment operations underway.

The voice hits then and she shuts her eyes, bending forward. 

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER

It’s the suddenness of it that prompts that response more than its intensity, but Skywalker immediately rises from his seat to leave.

She raises a hand, gritting out, “No. Stay.”

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER  
YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER  
YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER

Mara forces her hands to unclench. It’s going to stop. It’s just a matter of waiting for it to stop.

It does.

Skywalker is still frozen to the spot.

“Okay,” she breathes out, grateful he didn’t ask if she was all right. “Now, let’s go over that absurd garbage compactor entry and exit again.”

Skywalker slowly sits back down and runs through the details of it -- it’s not that bad of a plan, certainly out-of-the-box. She checks the chrono. It's been several hours, they're getting close to the depot. The _Chimaera_ should be dropping out of hyperspace any minute. She fights the temptation to nag at Skywalker to check the sensor readings again and focuses on their approach to the moon.

She feels a spike of emotion and turns her head. Skywalker is looking down at the sensor screen with a grin.

“It’s in. That,” he raises his head and points to a speck on the viewscreen, “is the _Chimaera_.”

Mara feels like she can breathe again. Not a lot, but enough. She closes her eyes. They’re going to get Karrde out. Everything is fine.

“This is Exor 7710 control," barks a voice on the comm as they pull in closer to the depot on Wistril's moon. "Please transmit your transponder code and state your purpose.”

“Exor 7710,” Mara begins smoothly. “This is Skipray Twenty Three, we are here to refuel and resupply. Commencing transponder code transmission.” Throwing several switches, she initiates the broadcast sequence. It's an old imperial transponder; this part's easy.

“Transponder code received," Control confirms after a few moments as they ease into the moon's atmosphere. "You're clear to land, Skipray Twenty Three. A warning: it’s going to get a little busy here. We have a Star Destroyer in the system and it’s coming for the same thing.”

She can’t help the smile that comes over her face though she keeps her tone earnest. “Oh, you don’t say?” Skywalker is still grinning beside her as the clouds peel away. “Our boss wants us to be back right away. He won't be pleased by delays.”

“Afraid so.”

The clouds give way to expansive pristine duracrete below, the depot stretching and glinting imperial-white as far as they can see. Countless other ships zoom down the many busy skylanes beside them. A patrol ship maneuvers up in front of them to lead them down.

“Well, thanks for letting us know.”

“No problem, Skipray Twenty Three.”

Mara closes the line and follows the patrol ship to the docking bay that lights up when they approach. She sets them down and begins running through the post-flight checklist as the ground crew approaches. They won’t be coming back for the ship any time soon, so she makes sure she has credits on hand to give to whoever is in charge to nip any inconvenient questions at the bud. She'll have to let Karrde know the bay number; he'll want someone to come get the Skipray later.

“Hey,” Skywalker says after the system diagnostics finish running. “I didn’t see the ysalamiri on the nutrient frame when I went to get my things. What happened to it?” 

Mara does a final check of her holdout blaster’s power pack, slides it in, and slaps the holdout back on the holster. “I killed it.” 

Skywalker stares wordlessly as she shrugs on her jacket, making sure her sleeve conceals the holster. She mentally runs over the designated shuttle departure points, but her knowledge there is spotty. She's not familiar with this supply depot. They'll need to access a terminal to figure out which shuttle loading dock is the closest. She slings the satchel over and stands.

He's still staring when Mara looks at him from over her shoulder and tips her head in the corridor’s direction. Time is short. 

“Let’s go.”

  


  
  


end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I think this can clip into canon, if a bit awkwardly. I could revisit this with a sequel that covers TLC my way, but it won't be any time soon because I have another long-delayed thing to get to *cough*Ricochet*cough*.
> 
> And being like really real, the biggest reason I'd write a sequel is so I can call it "Way Land."
> 
> Never met an overwrought metaphor I didn't like. 
> 
> You want canon notes? No? Okay you're getting some anyway.
> 
> 1\. Luke really did like Bakura (this is a random ass reference to Kathy Tyers' _Truce at Bakura_ set the day after RotJ). Lemme quote because this is amaze: _Luke imagined rich, damp smells, like on Endor. “Salis D’aar, capital city, is the seat of Imperial governorship. Bakuran contributions to Imperial security include a modest flow of strategic metals.…” So green. So wet. Luke shut his eyes._
> 
> Damn, Tyers. 
> 
> 2\. The "best trick" line is straight from _Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor_ : _Skywalker lifted his face from his hands and his eyes were dark. Wounded. Haunted by shadows. "My best trick is to do one thing--to make one small move, even a simple choice-- and kill thousands of people. Thousands."_ Ow.
> 
> Anyway, this was super fun to write. Do feel free to talk to me about it, if you like. Thanks for reading, everyone! *waves*


End file.
